Week 10 MyASICS Half Marathon Training

MyASICS Training Plan
Tuesday: 3 miles (10:28 pace)
Wednesday: 8.5 miles (8:04 – 8:43 pace)
Saturday: 8.5 miles (8:04 – 8:43 pace)

What I did
Monday: 6 miles with intervals at Mile High Club
I bought a 3-class introductory offer from Gilt City because I like Mile High Club, a boutique treadmill class, enough to use it to supplement treadmill training. Thanks to all of this frigid below freezing weather we’ve been experiencing, I’ve been running solely on the treadmill. Despite listening to really fascinating podcasts (e.g., Invisibilia), I’m going absolutely bonkers from the tedium of treadmill running. I’m now at the stage of needing to run longer training runs, which means more miles on the treadmill. I couldn’t handle the thought, so I hustled over to Mile High to log in some miles. It was definitely more fun in a boutique class with loud thumping music and an instructor yelling encouragements at you, but pricier too.

Tuesday: 3 miles (9:04 pace)
I did this after work. It was late, but since I only had to run a few miles, it wasn’t hard to get me out of the apartment and to the gym (I love that the gym is around the hall of our unit – 2 min walk). I did one easy mile, pushed hard and did the second mile at 8.7 mph to do some speed work, and did the final mile easy again).

Wednesday: 7 miles (8:04 pace)
More treadmill time. I meant to do 8.5 miles, but an important phone call interrupted me exactly as I finished 7 miles. By the time I was done with the phone call, I was already cooled down, so I decided that 7 miles was fine.

Saturday: 8 miles (~8:38 pace)
Not sure of my exact pace because Garmin decided it was too cold to work. I couldn’t get it to connect, so I approximated my pace based upon around what time I think I started and when I finished. Fleet Feet Hoboken, a local running store, and Powerbar were hosting a supported run. Fleet Feet created a 4-mile loop using the store was the starting/finishing point and you could run up to 5 laps. MyASICS said I needed to do 8.5 and I was so very tired of treadmill running that I eagerly signed up to do 8 miles with them.

Man, it was a cold, cold day. It was 21 degrees F. Normally you couldn’t pay me to go out and run in that weather, but I was sick of the treadmill and I knew that I would have other people to run with. Powerbar provided water, sports drink, protein bars, gels, and chews (Performance energy blasts). I tried the Performance energy blasts (strawberry banana flavored), which are gummy chews with a very tiny amount of liquid center. If you like gummy candies and chews like ShotBloks, you’ll also like these chews. It’s like eating candy.

I ran the first loop with a small group of people. It was really cold and it took me a while to “warm up.” It wasn’t until Mile 2 that my hands stopped feeling like they were two lumps of ice and I didn’t feel properly warmed up until we finished the first lap. Up until that I point I seriously debated stopping early and going home because I didn’t know how I could tolerate the pain. While everyone else decided to stop in the store for water and gels, I continued on because I knew I wouldn’t go back out to finish the run if I stopped. I just needed people to get started, but I didn’t need them to finish. I was fine until about Mile 6 where my hands got cold again. I hate it when my hands hurt like this. It felt like sharp cold pin were pricking into them over and over again. At that point there was nothing I could do but to hurry up. I ran faster and that seemed to get my blood flowing faster and warm my hands. Finally 8 cold miles were done. I was happy.

I met up with Ben who was waiting for me at Starbucks a couple blocks away. He got me a hot chocolate, so I could stop shivering. We had another cold walk home. I spent the rest of the day eating, napping, and cuddling Bandit. I just want to say that I love my puppy and her collection of sighs. She’s a communicative dog, but she “talks” to us in sighs. She has several sighs to express her moods, feelings, and especially complaints. The sighs are hysterical, especially when she’s grumpy or unhappy with us because she’s upset that she didn’t get her way about something.

Total Mileage: 24 miles

Thoughts
Highest mileage ever!!!! As I said before, I’m really a low mileage runner, so I usually peak around 15-20 miles per week. I know I need to increase my mileage for marathon training, so I’m using MyASICS to slowly increase the weekly mileage. I had been feeling run down from the increased mileage and took a break last week. This week, I ran more miles, but I’m feeling good. I’m looking forward to this week’s training.