Week 5 Half Marathon Training

Week 5


Oops, I screwed up what the plan was supposed to be last week.  Maybe I should actually print out the plan and start marking a hard copy up like a little birdie suggested.  Even though I'm a little off, I'm using Week 5 from the plan since I'm on the 5th week and I'm still on track with (and actually ahead of) what the plan thinks I should be doing.


Plan miles: 14 miles running plus some cross/strength training, or 16 miles running with one less session cross training
Actual miles: 20.13 miles in 3:26:06 with no strength or cross training 


My longest run was supposed to be 6 miles per my plan and my longest run was 7 miles.  I have to give a caveat, though, because we did briefly stop at the cars so there was a break around mile 5.  


I ran my long run with Colleen at North Park. She had already run one loop when I got there so we ran another one and she warned me beforehand it was pretty warm.  So I took off a bunch of layers before we even started. (It wasn't even 35 when we started the run- just crazy.  But it was sunny and must have felt warmer than the actual temperature.)  


I ended up running with a short sleeve shirt and a new long sleeve shirt over top of it and my running tights.  I like being able to unzip the top of my outer layer and the turtleneck was bugging me so at some point I took off the outer shirt and just ran in the t-shirt.  I think that was probably about halfway around the loop, around 2.5 miles.


My arms were cold but it was much better than running with my throat feeling constricted.  I think that shirt would work if it's cold out but I didn't need it today.  So when we finished the loop and were back at our cars, I left the outer shirt in the car and put on my arm warmers with the t-shirt. We also both drank some Gatorade to refuel.  Since we stopped, I suggested we run up the hill that I talked about here and we did another 2 miles.  (I realized as we ran the loop that I would only need 2 more miles to get the week over 20 total.)  I wanted to do the last two miles slowly (11:00 pace) but we don't seem to be good at that and I'm finding that I am extremely bad at judging how fast of a pace I'm running.  We actually ended up at an average pace of 10:24 with a few walks mostly during the 2nd mile.


My knee started hurting, so I think that was a good distance and I shouldn't be pushing it more.  It makes me worry about future weeks because the miles just go up and up, overall.  Plus I've been spoiled by this awesome winter weather and running outside.  I can't go as far or as fast on the treadmill.  (But I'm not complaining- at least I have that option at my house.)


The longest run was in intervals again, but I did run 5 miles earlier in the week without stopping.  I blogged about it in the same post I referred to above with the hill.


Also, the mileage on my teal shoes went up slightly more than the mileage I am reporting for training this week.  One of the days I ran around my neighborhood and my neighbor was on her way out to walk her dog as I was finishing up.  I decided to walk with her and I did log it on my GPS.  I did not count it as cross training since it was right after a run and more of a cool down, and I did not count it as part of the plan since it was all walking.  But I wanted to get that mileage on the shoes since I had them on.

Mileage on shoes
Teal: 344.4 miles
Purple: 15.7 miles


I looked at the plan for next week and it actually slows training down.  I was going to say here that I'm going to do that anyways.  I've been ramping up a LOT and I keep reading online that sometimes it's good to slow down for a week and back off a little bit.  My calves and IT bands have been pretty sore most of the week so I'm going to take that as a sign to just back off.  Besides, with Dave and my schedules this week, I'm not sure I will be able to get many runs in that aren't either around my neighborhood or on the treadmill.   I probably won't push it more, even if I do have the time.  


The plan says to skip the long run and do a 5K race.  I kind of screwed up the planning of that though!  The following week I'm registered to run a 5K with my sister.  So I'll see how this week goes and maybe swap Weeks 6 and 7.  Or mix them together somehow.