Half Marathon - Week 7

Ok. So I'm committed to running the Capitola Half Marathon on May 19. So committed in fact that I am following a training plan to help get me there. Before starting the training plan the longest I had run was a 5k, so I needed something to help me baby step my way to 13 miles. Today is the end of week 7 of the 16 week training plan that I am following (the plan came from Runkeeper, though I track my activity with Nike+ now).

I already have a planner (hard copy & google) dedicated to scheduling the runs and other activities that I should be doing for my plan. But I decided to add one more step to the accountability system and share it here. So be on the lookout for weekly running progress updates.

So now here we go with Week 7! The plan looked like this:

Ignore the sad faces... Runkeeper is sad that I didn't complete the runs, but I just didn't track them in Runkeeper. So this week should have totaled out at 21 miles. What I did though was 14.

Tuesday didn't start out well, I woke up with a bunch of sore back muscles,capped off with an extremely 'stuck' feeling on my right hip. The stuck situation is something I've had periodically for a few years now. I don't have a lot of mobility/flexibility in my right hip, so you mix in a lower back muscle knot and what I get is 'stuck'. I've got a routine of things that I do to release the stiffness and the knots. Nonetheless, come Tuesday afternoon when I headed out for 4 miles, I just couldn't get there. Every step was reverberating through the hip/low back area so I called it good at 2 miles of running. I came home and stretched it all out, then went for another mile of walking around the lake with my cousins.

Thursday just didn't happen. It was a board meeting at work, and even with Daylight Savings time, I didn't get home with enough time to run and do the household things I needed to get accomplished; I made the plan adjustment to move it to Friday. But then Friday came, a crazy day at work (my BFF's last) so again by the time I got home I just couldn't get the run in.

Saturday though was wonderful!! Up and at 'em to run first thing in the morning. Got all 4 miles in and I felt good the whole way. The hip/back problems were nowhere in sight. Came home and spent the afternoon pulling out our blackberry bramble and our guava tree - my total calorie burn was over 3000 for the day (which is over 500 beyond the target).

Today was another fantastic run!! There's a feeling of 8 miles being some kind of 'marker' for the progress to date. A sort of 'well if you can do 8; 13 is a no brainer'. So today running 8 miles for the first time was a great feeling of accomplishment. I missed last week's 7 miles, so I jumped from a 6 mile longest distance to 8 miles.

This is the meadow that served as today's 4 mile turn around point. Loved seeing the abundance of yellow. My favorite thing about running on Coyote Creek Trail for all of my workouts is that you can easily forget that you are running within the 10th largest city of the country, instead it's like being in the beautiful wild of Northern CA. Nevermind that 101 is a few hundred yards to the right of this view.

By the very end of my 8 miles I had a little bit of soreness developing in my calves and knees. The worst thing though was that I was running in a ribbed tank (which I have worn for shorter runs plenty of times), but for the 8 mile distance it was the wrong shirt. I am now chaffed on the inside of both of my arms from rubbing against the ribbing. Lesson learned.

So I made 14 of 21 miles for the week, and that is still 14 more than I was running a year ago so I'm pleased. I've post run stretched, had a cool shower, awesome brunch, and now to relax with laundry and a visit to some bunnies who will be coming home to us soon. (Pictures of them to come sometime soon).