Well, here we are only 5 days away from Warrior Dash and 8 weeks away from my next half marathon, so of course we had some training going on around here this weekend!
The weekend began with Daddy-o killing a hill suicide that I created for him. We have a little Suicide Hill situation going on at boot camp this month (which is SO not little)! It's been kicking my booty, but I can already tell how much it's benefitting me. My knees do not always agree, but I'm working on convincing them that it's good for us. This inspired me to present the challenge to Daddy-o on an uphill street in our neighborhood. His suicide ended up being even longer than ours, and he finished it at a great pace. I was so proud!
Daddy-o also tackled some core work in the living room, and The Oldest decided to join in the fun.
Father-son partner plank/sit-ups...
Yeah, I have no idea why he thought it was necessary to shed the shirt before the workout, but whatever...
*Please excuse the bad cell phone pics and the mess of baby toys everywhere. And, yes, we have a baby jail in the living room. It's a must around here. For his own good. Moving on...
Saturday morning it was time for my weekly long run. It was cold (about 26 degrees), and it was my longest run since Thanksgiving, but I met up with the group ready to roll. I had decided that I wanted to have a strong run and told myself that I was going to push my pace on the 2nd mile and then alternate between a comfortable pace and an "outside my comfort zone" pace each mile after that. My goal for this next half is basically to PR, and I hope to take off some fairly significant minutes. I ran my 1st and 2nd half marathons as a proud turtle, and I am thrilled to have crossed those 2 finish lines at 2:30 and 2:32.
I have now, however, decided to start on the road toward turtle recovery, and I'm proud to say that I completed step one of the process! When I reviewed my Garmin after the run on Saturday, I was so excited to find that I had indeed maintained my fastest pace to date at that distance (7.2 miles at a 10:55 pace -- like I said, it's step one. Progress!).
I did struggle in the last mile, and my faster intervals slowed some over time, but here's what I learned -- pushing my pace to the uncomfortable at intervals during the run made even my "easy" miles faster than they've been in the past. That last mile, when I even stopped and walked a bit, was faster than many miles I've run in training before and in past races. YES!
That's good news for this recovering turtle, my friends!
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