Mini Tri & Tempo

Man, I have been bad about posting this week. Work has been busy, then I had a co-worker/friend in town on Thursday and my sister and niece flew in from Boston on Friday and are here til next Thursday. Lots of action! Here is my recap:

Thursday:

I was supposed to do a swim+bike workout. Swim for 750 yards @ steady state, then get out and jump on a bike quickly to do an hour of steady state ride in zone 1 or 2. My co-worker/friend came down from Seattle with her b/f for the weekend so we worked together from my apt all day then she bought a day pass at my gym. When I used to live in Seattle we'd occasionally workout together and always had fun. Anyway, I jumped in the pool and eeked out a quick 800 meters (or yards, or whatever), then changed and went to spin class. Of course the spin class is way more of a workout than Z1-2 but I like it and I did it. So there! After that I was feeling so good I wanted to see what running would feel like - so I convinced my friend to get on the treadmill next to me for a mile. I started the pace off really slow because I thought it would feel hard, but it didn't so I kept accelerating until the end when I was under a 7:00 pace. The whole mile was 8:40 and felt great. So, I did a little mini triathlon this week - sweet!

Swim = 800 m/14:00ish?
Bike = 1 hour spin class
Run = 1 mile/8:40

After the gym we went out for dinner and drinks and ended up meeting up with her b/f, my b/f and others and staying out waaay too late drinking too many drinks. It was heaps o fun.

Friday:

Had this been 10 years ago I would have woken up, flicked the lint off my shoulder and gone out to do it again. Fast-forward to my current over the hill state and I'm a goner. Friday morning was painful - I was tired, headachy, forgetful and overall quite dysfunctional. I was supposed to do weight training (which is coincidentally called my "off" day - there is nothing OFF about doing weight training, mister coach man). But guess what. I didn't. I had to work from an actual office that day and had my sister arriving at 4:30 so I didn't make it a priority in my schedule. And I'm okay with that.

Saturday:

Woke up early to work today - moving an office from one part of the city to another. Luckily it was a small move and not too stressful or lengthy. But I worked about 5 hours and any work on the weekend technically sucks in my book. My sister was with another friend for the night and I had an invite to go to the NCAA regional games so I spent 5 hours watching hoops and eating crap! I sort of "forgot" that I had a 6 mile tempo run but when I got home at 8 p.m. I guilted myself into doing it. I'd already missed my Monday 5 miler and am going to have to struggle to cram in 11 miles tomorrow that I figured I couldn't miss this.

This is the latest I've done a run in forever and it kinda sucked. Running late means you've had all day to put crap into your body which means that there's, well, more crap in your body. I had yet another really close call on this run! That's all you need to hear.

I didn't realize until 5 minutes before I left that this run was going to be harder than my past tempo runs: 1.5 warm up/3 miles @ 7:30/1.5 mile cool down. My past tempos only had TWO miles of speed and now I'm going to THREE? Hot.

Mile 1.5 = 13:10/8:46 pace/135 bpm

Tempo Mile 1 = 7:18/168 bpm
Tempo Mile 2 = 7:29/174 bpm
Tempo Mile 3 = 7:22/178 bpm
Tempo Mile 3.1 = 0:44/180 bpm
TOTAL TEMPO = 3.1 miles/5k/22:51/7:22 pace/173 bpm

Mile 1.4 = 14:40/9:41/155 bpm

I decided to make the tempo a 5k to measure it out compared to the race and future races. This was a hard tempo but it felt all right. It was hard running at this time of day and the lack of good food and water in my body. (Today I ate a spinach/feta breakfast wrap from Sbux, tons of Tim's Cascade potato chips [Johnny's Seasoning Salt flavor], a huge soft serve waffle cone, soft pretzel+cheese plus a diet coke. I consumed little to no water. All of this is totally atypical and gross.)

Anyway, I feel good that I was still able to break my goal of 23:00 in the 5k! I didn't really set out to do that, I just wanted to run 7:30s or better. I am excited that these tempos are becoming more challenging. I'm starting to think more about what I want to start doing in races long term and it is exciting. After last week's race I think I've got a lot ahead of me that I want to shoot for and I'm starting to believe that it is possible. Yikes!

Tomorrow is 11 miles in Z3. I have a lot planned for the day so am going to do it first thing in the a.m. I hope I actually do it.

Hope your wknds are going well!