Showing posts with label One Week Challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label One Week Challenge. Show all posts

Saturday, February 19, 2011

One-week challenge wrap-up

BIG CONGRATULATIONS TO RUNNINGFIRST. He did it. He ran a solo 16 miler today (read it here) and with that, has won the challenge. Keep up the good work!! Go get those PR's this spring!


Here's the break-down of the rest of my week's workouts. It was a tough and rewarding week.


Thursday was my rest day.

Friday was a 6 mile pace workout. The plan was to run one warm-up mile, 4 miles at 9:09 and 1 cool-down mile. But I ran the first three miles much too fast. I slowed down almost far enough after that, but the damage was done. The result of the workout was that I was sore last night.

I HATE that I have to say the following. HATE it. But here goes: I had no business trying to run my 12 miler today. For one thing, I had a fever (which I didn't bother to actually measure with a thermometer, but took the sweats/shivers as a sure enough sign). For another, I'm fighting an infection. I'm on amoxicillin for what turned out to be the worst sinus infection of my life. Third, one of the two runs I missed when this sinus infection was a bad cold was the 9 mile long run that was meant to prep me for this step-up in mileage. And finally, I ran entirely too hard yesterday. The end result of all this was a 12-miler that I got through successfully, but it took more effort than usual. Average pace of 10:06, which is right on target. Here I am when I got back to the house.


I give you this picture as a teaser for tomorrow's post. I have two new product reviews, an update on The Vengeance, and an update to an old product review. Stay tuned!

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

One Week Challenge Update

Semi-daily update for my One Week Smackdown Challenge with RunningFirst. 

Today I had a tempo run on deck. It was, honestly, a lot of fun. I got to run it outside in shorts! It was 45 degrees and lovely. I ran the warm-up and cool-down on sidewalks and the faster part on a 1/3 mile outdoor track, to ensure that I wouldn't get caught at a light and get slowed down. Sometime I will really have to post pictures of the track, mostly for its view of downtown. 

Mile 1: 9:48 (warm-up)
Mile 2: 8:55
Mile 3: 8:42
Mile 4: 8:41
Mile 5: 8:41
Mile 6: 10:02 (cool-down, got caught at a light)

After I settled into the workout, I was really consistent on the mile times, and it felt good. This was definitely a confidence booster of a run. And a bonus--since I was basically the only person on the track, I got to switch directions every mile, just as a special shout-out to my ITB.