Week 6-Training to pace the Hawk 100

My coach posed a question to me this week and I had to ponder it for a bit.  Do you want to run faster? I have noticed that your speed has dropped by almost 2 minutes per mile on your easy runs.  Want to get back to that 10 minute mile you use to run easy?  Honestly, I think the answer is no.  I am okay with slowing down, and if anything I am trying to keep my heart rate down and slow down on my easy runs.  Plus, I would love to do more trail runs and that is an even slower pace for me.  I still need to think a bit more, but I am pretty sure the answer is, I am very happy with where I am at.  Now I do need to loose weight as my weight has steadily crept up even more than it ever has.  I am currently at the highest I have ever weighed, especially since I have been running.  I have gained almost 18 lbs, probably due to us eating out every.single.meal.  This has to stop because i can not out run a bad diet and my diet is the worst it has ever been.  Other than that, stopping the aches and pains is my number one goal right now and speed is not even on my radar.

Get ready for lots of cat pictures because well, he's so damn cute!

Monday:  Rest day.  Enough said.

Tuesday:  Fun speed work.  1 minute hard, 1 minute and 30 seconds easy for 8 repeats.  1 mile warm up and finish out to get 5 miles.  We all had different paces for this one and even though it was pretty darn humid, I was able to keep most everything in the 9-9:30 range.  Again, I don't mind doing this kind of speed work because i can do anything for a minute :)  Later on in the day I was feeling super crummy.  I am not sure if my body was fighting something off or the early to rise time was just too much but I canceled my trip into town to do the group run/running form drill clinic and just hit the hay super early with some extra vitamin C.

Wednesday:  Cross training day.  I worked almost 12 hours and called it good.  Is working your butt off a cross training exercise?  If it isn't, it should be!!!  I am super excited though to see the company grow in leaps and bounds and be a part of that!  We are getting ready to move from an LLC to Incorporated due to our success and I am so very proud of my hubby:)

Thursday:  Easy run.  The humidity was horrible and i almost didn't bring stella.  I had a hard time keeping my heart rate down and just keeping up with the girls.  Later after work, we decided to get off at a decent hour and go to the movies to see the new Transylvania 3 movie.  We love that series and while this one wasn't as good in my opinion as the other two, it still was pretty good.

Friday:  cross training day.   Again worked late, ate late, and called it good.  Right now i need sleep and rest post working for my body, and that is what I am doing.

Saturday:  The Snake 10 miler.  What a fun race!  I will do a race review in another post.

Sunday: I woke up sore with a full agenda thanks to my bringing seed ticks home.  Yes, Stella and I got majorly tick bombed, and we were both covered.  Stella is on flea and tick meds, but I am not since sadly they don't make any for humans.  I had picked all of them off as soon as I had gotten home on saturday, but around 2 am, I woke up itching like crazy.  Plus, I still felt like they were moving all over me even though they were not.  I finally got out of bed, took some benedryl, and got back to sleep around 3 am.  I had a million things to do to make sure those ticks didn't spread to anyone else in the family including bombing my van and taking everything out  and doing a deep cleaning.  I honestly haven't done that in years, so it was good to get all of my dog/kid stuff out, sort through all of it, and get rid of some stuff I had been carting around for no reason.  I had decided I would ride my bike later in the day.  I worked on house stuff and van stuff till time for Andrew to head to vacation bible school and then just decided to get some work done at the shop and have an early bed time.  I promise I will get back on the cross training/strength training band wagon next week.

Another trail race and another profession of loving the trail.  I have one more trail race this next week and i am already looking for more.  Even just 10 miles feels like enough to me on the trails and satisfies my running needs. 

Have a great week!