Run Commuting

Today I had a dentist appointment at 9:30. My dentist is in Dupont and is about 4 miles from my house. I wanted to run 5 for the day, so I figured it would be easy to tack on an extra mile to the route. The sad part about this day is that I still had to work after the appointment and it was raining and probably still is raining (I have no window) cats and dogs out there!

So this is how I  usually make my commute run work.

1. Bring in my dress clothes the day before: I usually bring in my outfit the day before (along with my swim stuff) and drop it off at my desk. This way I am not hassled with running with a bag on the next morning.

2. Keep necessities at your desk: One of my filling cabinets is basically like I transplanted my bathroom from home. I have everything you could think of: brush, makeup, deodorant, extra towel, etc ...

3. Keep an extra outfit at work: I always have an extra outfit (and now undies and a bra) at work just incase I forget something because yeah I don't always remember everything.

I thought I was being smart by bringing my clothes in the day before, but when I looked out the window this morning I saw that it was raining and raining hard. Which defeated bringing my clothes in since I was going to still have to run to the dentist with a small bag on my back. I really didn't want to sit through my appointment wet and freezing.

I packed another running outfit in a 2 gallon zip lock bag and stuffed it in my bag and out into the rain I went. The run itself was great even though my garmin didn't like it and was beeping all over the place. Once at the dentist office I was that crazy looking girl who was dripping wet from head to toe and used to bathroom to change in. I wasn't too happy with the bag while I was running, but boy was I happy to have warm dry clothes to change into!

Once my appointment was finished, I went to the 711 next door, bought myself an umbrella and made my way to the metro like a normal commuter. My dry outfit of course got wet even though I had an umbrella, but have no fear I had another full outfit change waiting for me :)

5 happy miles in the rain done and warm dry clothes ftw!

Happy Wed all :) 

Confidence run

Sunday I felt like death warmed over me, so I pushed back my final longish run before the B&A Half till Monday.

 

I was wondering how I was going to fit this run in since I coach after work and lets face it, I'm not a morning person. Although I know I will have to be a morning person sooner than later. I did set my alarm for 5:50 but turned that sucker off and got up an hour later :) Which left me with one choice, do an extra long lunch run.

 

And that's exactly what I did. Unlike Sunday my body actually felt awake and I was excited to run. Plus it was warm and sunny out which means I always wish I was running instead of sitting at my desk.

 

Running in the middle of afternoon can always be a little tricky food wise. I had a cup of dry cereal at 8:30, greek yogurt at 10, and an apple at 10:30. My stomach seemed happy with this during the run and didn't give me any issues.

 

I was out the door running by 11am and my legs felt so happy. I could tell I was excited to be running because my Garmin beeped 7:28 for the first mile. I knew I had to slow down and my second mile was a little slower at 7:52. I really didn't have a pace goal in mind at all for this run and really just wanted to be taking it easy, but I was feeling good and just went with the flow of things.

 

For the rest of the run I tried to ignore my Garmin, best I could. I passed the Lincoln and made my way down to Haines Point were I saw some cyclists out and I got jealous of them. I don't know when I started to get jealous of people riding? I have always gotten jealous when I see people running and I'm not, but now this silly thought has moved onto cycling as well. And with that I guess I can say I'm officially addicted to biking which is a good thing since I will be doing a lot of it. Anyhow, after leaving Haines at 15th St, I made my way back down to the Capitol, up the lovely hill and back around to my office.

 

It such a beautiful day out and I felt like I had a really strong run. My splits for miles 3 -7 were around 8:10 - 8:15 with my last mile at 8:05. I think pushing this run back one day was a smart move on my part because I would have struggled big time on Sunday and felt defeated when I was finished. But now, I can go into the B&A half with confidence and I can only hope I feel this good on race day.

 

Happy Tues All :) 

Training Week 6

Last week marked week 6 of half ironman training. The week started off great then I fizzled out as the weekend came along.

 

Monday

* Swim: 2150 yards ~ This was a nice easy swim and I had the day off from work which  meant I could swim in the middle of the afternoon. OMG this was so nice and I always wish I had Monday's off.

 

Tues

* Bike: 26.5 miles (1:45 on the trainer) ~ Not a bad day doing interval work on the trainer, but my poor little kiwi! She got bike grease on the white part of her fur and was the first casualty of IM training. I'm sure there will be many more #IMtrainingcasualties

 

Wed

* Run(am): 5.65 miles ~ I'm pretty sure I already bitched about this tempo run once, but it didn't go as planned at all. I wanted to hit 7:30 splits and didn't hit any of my splits at that pace. I felt tired and the run was hard for me.

 

* Swim(pm): 2500 yards ~ Just an average swim day as I swam against the clock before the pool closes at 5 for swim classes. I really wish they kept one lane open during these classes so I wouldn't be restricted by the clock. Still not sure how I'm going to work this out when I need to swim longer than 45 minutes.

 

Thurs 

* Bike: 4 mile commute + 21.4 miles at Haines ~ The weather was perfect on this day with a high of 70 I think? So I planned ahead and came into work an hour early so I could take an extra long lunch break and go enjoy the weather and ride my bike outside instead of on the trainer at 9:30 at night. I met Karen down at HP and we had a great ride. I really didn't want to come back to work at all and could have stayed outside all day.

 

Friday

* Run(am): 4.35 miles ~ Fridays = hill work for me. I ran up and down Capitol hill 7 times and managed to drop my phone while doing so. Lucky for me somehow my screen did not crack and the back part of my case only got all scratched up. I really need to invent something to hold my phone in while running. But back to the run, I am still running at about a 9 minute pace up the hill and I would like to get this down to a 8 something.

 

*Swim(pm): 2600 yards ~ I did not want to do this swim at all. I sat at my desk thinking of ways I could get out of it. But in the end I did the right thing and went to the pool. And boy oh boy am I glad I did. I had an awesome swim day!! First plus was I got a lane all to myself :) And I guess just overall I felt great in the water this day and before I knew it, it was 5 and the life guard was kicking me out.

 

Sat

I had a 2:15 hour ride scheduled for this day, but I couldn't do it due to coaching. I had to be at a gymnastics meets all day at the Eastern Shore in MD. It was a long day. I left at 5:30 in the morning and didn't get home till around midnight. My girls did great though and we came home with some first, second, and third places.

 

Sunday   

Run: 8 miles, Swim: 30 minutes ~ But I didn't do either! I know, I know, what's wrong with me? Two rest days in a row, well if you want to call Saturday a rest day? And yeah I don't know what was wrong with me? I can tell you this though, I was so tired and my body was aching for some reason. I woke up at 7, stayed up for an hour and went back to sleep until 10:45. After watching a cheesy movie I was back in bed taking a nap. I think coaching whipped me out? I thought about running and really wanted to, but I didn't move off the couch. When I finally did move I went out to dinner instead of running. Big fail in motivation for the day and big fail for being so tired.

 

Overall, I think I had a great week besides the weekend. Today is usually my rest day on the schedule, but since I didn't do anything yesterday, I will be doing Sunday's workouts today. Hope my co-workers like me extra sweaty after my longish lunch run. 

Happy Monday All :)