Week 7 half marathon training

Week 7


Plan miles:  16 miles running plus some cross/strength training
Actual miles:  19.03 miles in 3:32:29 and 80 minutes of cross training (23.8 miles on the bicycle)


I think it's time to retire my first pair of running shoes- the teal ones.  I was fine on the treadmill, twice, and my knees didn't hurt.  I generally wear the purple/newer shoes on the treadmill to break them in and keep them cleaner.  On the long run, I met 5 other people at North Park and at 3.5 miles in my knee was hurting pretty badly!  In fact for a little bit I was limping.  So it made the long run really hard.  When we finished the first loop (5 miles) 3 of the 6 people left but during discussions someone mentioned needing new shoes and it clicked that when I've run with the teal/older shoes, my knee has hurt pretty consistently.  I keep blaming it on other stuff- for example, running in the sand on Tybee Island, then running a race the day after that, etc.  But maybe it's as simple as the shoes.  I'll try out my next long run with the purple shoes and see if it makes a difference.

Before the long run at North Park.
2 of us are signed up for the full marathon and 4 of us are signed up for the half marathon.
Photo credit to a random runner who was at his car.  :)  And Colleen's camera

My longest run was supposed to be 7 miles and I made it a quasi 8-10 miles, depending on how you count it.  The first loop (5 miles) was with 6 of us and we ran in intervals of 4:1.  The average pace was 10:17 so even with walking intervals I consider that pretty good.  However, with my knee hurting...  I wasn't sure how far I'd go.  Sarah and I ran the 2nd loop together.  I needed 7 miles and she wanted to do 8 so I agreed to run 3 more with her if she'd be willing to walk the last 2 with me back to the cars.  That was a good plan in theory but didn't really work out.  When I'd start running, my knee hurt quite a bit.  But if I pushed it would start to feel better for awhile, and then really hurt again.  So we would run a little while, then I'd force us to walk.  Then we'd try it again.  Without doing any real intervals (although each run was more than 4 minutes- I wasn't timing, just going by how my knee felt).  I pretty much made sure we actually ran 3 miles to get to 8 but it took until about the 4th mile of 5 to get that in.  So I almost think I could count the "run" as 10 miles, or 9 miles with the last mile being a walk.


My short runs are now up to 4.5 mile runs and I'm even doing them on the treadmill, which is an accomplishment.  Right now it takes about 2 Friends episodes to go 4.5 miles.  I'm not sure what I'll do in a few weeks when I have to bump that up to 5!  Also, I'm actually starting to run those straight through without stopping or walking.  My last treadmill run was on Thursday and I hopped off at 4 miles but only to tie my shoe and I got right back on the treadmill to finish out the 4.5 miles.


I can definitely tell I'm in general getting stronger.


Mileage on shoes

Teal: 362.8 miles
Purple: 31.8 miles

I came across a good running quote this week: My sport is your sport's punishment.  That made me laugh and think of tennis in high school.  So true!