“Drunk Chick Passed Out On Pavement”

I bet that title got your attention today!

Because, according to the search terms people use to get to my blog, this is how someone got here.  Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.  Just for the record: I have never been passed out on the pavement.  Ever. And I don’t plan on starting either. Clearly this reader will have left here disappointed. But I found it hilarious anyway.

Okay moving on…

Apparently there was a 5k on Sunday morning a block from my apartment. Why did I not know about this?!  When I started my “recovery run” (more on that later) I noticed mile markers and when I was finishing up the run I saw the starting line.  Not that I really should have been thinking about racing so soon after last weekend (Question: am I ever going to get tired of linking to that RR?! Answer: never) but it reinforced that I really need to get in touch with the local running community and make a trip to the local running store again.  Simply waving and smiling (and batting a few eyelashes) isn’t going to cut it anymore.  Time to make my presence known 😉

But like I said, I went out for a recovery run first thing on Sunday.  The combination of having a really good dream (too bad I can never remember the good ones!) and the temps being so cold last night (okay so it was only 50*.  It felt cold though) that the covers were so warm made it almost impossible to get out of bed.  I mean obviously I did but there was a moment or two of “I just want to lay here forever”.

Because it was so cold last night I opted for my neon green long sleeve for my run.  The weird thing was that once I stepped out of my apartment the air felt about 10* warmer than inside! I kept the long sleeve on though because I like being able to wrap my hands in the sleeves.   And it’s literally neon green.  Question: How can you beat that?!

I apolog-- oh wait no I don't. I think pink + green = amazing combo. I didn't run in the pink shorts though (or the sexy socks) because I'm writing this post run and thus threw the shirt on for a random picture. I'm pretty sure my roomie thinks I'm nuts 😉

Answer: You can’t

Lately I’ve been struggling with my sense of direction and I decided to tackle one of my “not-on-the-path” routes that I have yet to run properly.  Not that I’ve ever been fully lost.  I do have a keen sense of direction and always know where I am but sometimes I doubt that ability and take wrong turns because I feel like a turn should have happened already.

I am proud to say that I ran the entire route properly. And then because I was feeling really good despite having run looooooooooong the day before (and running an 8:29 pace! Although I didn’t know that at the time) I added on a little bit extra.  So maybe Sunday wasn’t really the recovery day that it should have been.

Not much else to say about it except that this route has some killer hills (I literally live in the neighborhood called “College Hill” after all) and, with the exception of maybe the first hill on the route because I was still warming up a bit, I didn’t notice them.  Even this one which comes at a point where I’m pretty far away from my place (and thus really effing tired already!)

Not the best quality of a picture but hopefully you guys can see the line where the hill just drops. AKA where the sunlight is on the next street over is about 100m BELOW where I’m standing.

You know how way back in the day people thought the world was flat and that we’d drop off the face of the Earth if we traveled too far? Yeah.  Well that’s what I think every time I come to this hill.  The only thing worse than going down is knowing that I have to go back up.

And view from the bottom:

Again, not the best quality but hills are darn hard to capture on film!

So much for recovery from the LR with hills like these.  And they are everywhere here!  And with another speed session on tap for a bright and early Monday morning, well maybe I should have re-thought this route.  My pathway is relatively flat though, but after running it all week I wanted to break loose.

And so, with a killer 13.6 mile long run on Saturday and a very hilly recovery-yet-so-not-recovery run on Sunday I awoke bright and early to do a repeat of last Thursday’s speed work courtesy of my new coach. Aka Lacey.

Bright and early = I had to run this at 0500.  Which is a totally different beast than even 0530.  At least with the latter there’s a promise of sunlight at some point.  Not so much at 0500.  And the path where I warmed up, well there are no streetlights on the actual path — it’s a path that divides the road so the streetlights are on the actual sidewalks.  So I did have some light but it was still a little spooky I guess.  But as I started off I definitely thought it could motivate me to run faster!

In case you’re too lazy to click my link above, here’s what the deal-io was:

• Warm up
• 2 X 1 mile continuous
• Warm down

Granted I changed it up last time (and for that I’m going to make you click the link if you’ve forgotten) and, duh, changing it up was likely and what I knew was going to happen anyway when I hit the streets.  My target pace for the miles was 6:45, ideally with the second mile being faster than the first.  This was the case last time but my first mile was kind of slow.  Paige had a really good suggestion of adding strides during the tail end of my warm up because I suspect the reason the first mile had been slow was because my warm up was done slowly and the fastness in me hadn’t been woken up yet.  So during the warm up I added about 8 or so strides over second half.

It was another chilly morning here in New England which fit me just fine for some speediness. While  I don’t mind running in heat at all (in fact I actually enjoy it) the cool, crisp temps of September and October really make interval workouts enjoyable.  Granted by the end of the hard stuff I was sweating so much I thought I was in the dog days of August but oh well.  I was working hard 🙂

Here’s what went down:

• Warm up: 3.7 miles @ 8:59
• 2 X 1 mile (1st: 6:47, 2nd: 645)
• 1 mile recovery @ 8:50
• 1 mile HARD @ 6:26
• 2.8 mile warm up @ 8:22

Total: 10.5 (although I think it’s actually 10.6 with the way I round my warm up/down) @ 8:16 (or 8:11 if you use the 10.6)

So I think that this workout possibly went better than the last time (which I linked above but will again here) just because the pacing was more even. Surprising after the weekend of miles and hills. I’m not 100% sure of the splits for the 2 X 1 mile just because it was still pitch black when I hit the 1 mile mark and I was running so hard that I’m pretty sure I lost the ability to do my usual mental math but I’m 99.99% sure.  And I know that the two of them together were 13:32.

I will say that the second one was WAY harder than the first mile.  Which wasn’t the case last time.  I actually thought that I’d be getting positive splits for, very likely, the first time.  I didn’t and then busted out another great mile at the end.  But trust me: I was hurting.  Breathing hard and my quads were like jelly.

Sign of a good workout? Maybe?

Another sign might be that the recovery mile and the warm down felt sloooooooooooooooooow.  The recovery mile is actually a lot slower than last time but felt so much faster.  I use street signs as the mile markers and every time I’d pass a new street I’d pray that it WASN’T the one I needed to start that third mile!

But the third mile went really well.  At least time wise.  I had to keep mentally telling myself to not let up or coast.  Which is probably a good thing because if I plan on running a fast and hard 5k then I’m going to have to fight through the pain that is fast running.

I finished the workout a little dazed from the effort because the warm down, not only felt like I was walking, but I *ranpastmyapartment*.  Oops. Not the biggest deal because the warm down wasn’t over (I run two small loops) butttt I looked around at one point and was like, ummm I think I missed a turn for the typical first loop.

To think I claim running wakes me up in the morning 😉

So that is that.  Another speed session in the books.  I’m still not quite sure how I truly feel about it because A) I don’t have a measure by which to judge speed workout, specifically for the 5k and B) I’m a perfectionist and didn’t smash my times from last week.  Which annoys me. But on paper it looks good I think. So I’m still iffy about whether or not this workout was a big success or not.

I guess we’ll see this weekend, right? 8)