Maybe I should have given myself a little more time to recover from the half marathon, but the past week started off a little shaky. I did take Sunday off, but then went out for six on Monday and finished averaging an 8:05 pace. Not ideal for a six miler, but as my running partner said, "You don't want to go out too hard so soon after a long race". Fair enough. Tuesday we hit a high school track for some speed work. We had been planning on doing this for a while. We decided to start small to give us time to get used to running fast in the heat, so we did a 1600m warmup then ran 8x400. I guess that was a wise decision because we felt like we would not have been able to do any more than that. We pretty consistently ran 1:37 intervals. The problem that we both had with this was that as tired as we were, we weren't happy with the lack of distance. All said with warmup, intervals, recovery jogs, and cool down we ran, aggregate, no more than 4.5 miles. We're planning on keeping it up for a while, but I'm dubious as to the benefits. Wednesday I went out on my own and ran eight. Fortunately, I finished with a sub 8 minute pace, but only just. And I had to haul for the last mile to get that. Thursday, I gave my legs a much needed rest. They were feeling heavy. I had Friday off from work so I went out that morning planning on not running any more than six because I knew that I was going to run somewhat long on Saturday. It was a leisurely 8:04 pace, and I wish that I could say that it was so on purpose. But that's all right. So Saturday morning I went ten and ran it at an 8:10 pace. So, clearly, last week was just about grinding. I ended the week with 34 miles which isn't terrible. But hopefully with the half marathon now over a week behind me, my legs will start to feel a little fresher.
I took yesterday off after the ten miler. As I thumbed through the Sunday Best Buy ad (a generally fruitless weekly ritual), I saw that they had the Garmin 405 on sale for $250. Long story short, I got it. I've wanted one for a while, and $50 off of the normal hefty $300 tag was enough for me to suck it up and drop the money. I went on my first run with it this afternoon, and, in short, it's awesome. It's so nice to have my distance and pace right there with me every step of the way. And the Garmin Connect website that I can now upload my runs to is fantastic. So much fun. I can't wait until I've logged several miles using it.
As for the run itself, I don't know if I was trying to impress my new watch or what, but I ran a relatively fast seven miles. According to my nifty new toy, my pace was 7:45 and my best pace was 6:09. I must have been running down a short hill when I hit that pace. One thing that I didn't do was set the watch to record each mile as a lap. I know there's a way to do that because my running partner does that with hers. I'll figure it out, though. Shouldn't be too difficult. But, good, right? This week has started off on a much better note than last. Probably going to the track again tomorrow. Maybe we'll be a little faster a week later. Who knows?
So this past week has been interesting to be sure. I'm looking to push my mileage to somewhere between 35-40. Shouldn't be too hard. I'm already 1 mile ahead of where I was last week.
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