Week in review

Another week gone by where between the pressures of work, training and family, I didn't have time to blog! The week was very good training wise with 81km out of 85 the plan required. I'm calling it done :)

On Monday, I did a quick 12k at lunch in about 58 minutes. Nothing special to report other than the legs felt great. Tuesday was a weights day, I did my 2 sets satisfactorily.

On Wednesday, I ran in to work. The plan called for a 22km tempo run so I stretched it to 25km and finished in a little over 2h02m. It feels so good to let it all out once in a while and wonder at how well training has been progressing. I love the feeling I get when my legs are giving me what I want, I feel like a well oiled machine!

I remember looking at my watch at the 21.1km mark and realizing that if this was a half marathon, it would be a PR. This, during training with nobody to chase. Awesome. Some of my friends even saw me running and mentionned it on Twitter. Thanks @isfalk and @tgrevatt, that's a super boost to know that not only I felt great, fast and strong but also looked it :) Look at the speed heatmap (thanks RunSaturday again for this amazing feature!)
At 4:54m/km, it's a very respectable effort that is probably responsible for what came next. On Thursday, I was supposed to do an interval run. I picked 2x1k with 500m rests. However, the legs didn't agree and the wind started acting up so I finished with the first 2 intervals within my goals, the next 2 a bit slower than I wanted and then gave up and ran the rest of the way at a pretty even pace. Total of 12k at 1:01, not that bad.

I switched the long run to Saturday because my boyfriend got tickets to the Senators' hockey game on Saturday through a recognition program at work. I had 32km to do and decided to head for the trails (crushed stone, not really trails). I knew I'd be a bit short but there's a few places to loop around to add extra kms near my house anyways. I am really lucky that we have such wonderful trails here in Ottawa.
Even saw some horses that didn't look like they wanted to race
I had dressed a bit to warm and ended up slowing down near the end as mid day was approaching. I still managed a reasonable time of 3h01m22s which is about 5:42m/km, only 12 seconds/km slower than I wanted.

With a total of 81km for the week, I think my work is done. Next week is 90km. OUCH!