No injury this go ’round, and I actually got to complete peak week!

Who would have thought that would be exciting?

Monday – cross train. 45 minutes on bike trainer. Like the treadmill, the trainer is something I’m really glad to have when I need it, but I’d really rather not need it. Alas, it was too cold to ride outside so I dusted it off. I used a workout I found in my “Run Less Run Faster” book and it actually kept me from getting bored. 10 min warm up followed by 6x 1 min @ perceived effort level 4 and then 4 minutes at effort level 1. 5 min cool down.

Tuesday – speed work. 5x 1000m with 400m recovery. I did these in my neighborhood instead of the track, since our usual track night was a local running stores’ monthly group run. It went better than expected. Goal pace was 6:53. Splits were 6:50, 6:47, 6:44, 6:45, 6:53. I forgot to hit the lap button on my watch between the last recovery and last split and spent probably a tenth of a mile trying to figure out what the heck happened.

Wednesday – tempo. 1 mile easy, 5 @ 7:40 average (goal was 7:50). Fleet Feet put on their monthly pub run so I used it as my tempo. A couple friends of mine and I showed up early, ran 3 miles and then ran 3 with the group. We ran the first two tempo miles a little faster than goal (7:46, 7:47) but ended up speeding up when the large run started so we wouldn’t lose the group leaders in the dark. My last two miles were in the 7:30’s. It was a good run though, in that it makes me think if I can run 5 miles at 7:40 and feel relatively comfortable, shooting for a 7:50 average half marathon would be doable! This plan is definitely making me faster!

Thursday – cross train. Swim 1600 meters. I got stuck in traffic because of an accident and got there with less than an hour to swim, change and get to work. So, I swam a mile without stopping. Much to my surprise, I did it in a minute and 50 seconds less than the last attempt!

Friday – rest day.

Saturday – long run. 13 miles @ 8:21. Not much to report here, other than it was nice to “only” run 13.

Sunday – active rest day. 45 minutes of yoga. I was STIFF when I woke up and this was just what I needed.