Week 6 Down! 12 to Go!

Finished my work project for this week for the most part. Put in some long days though. Sorry for the mass update, but I didn't have much time other than to check out Haiku Thursday. Summary of this week. As usually rest/cross training days were rest days.

Tuesday: Did 8 miles with 6 strides in the morning. I only realized after that I was actually supposed to do 8 strides. Oh well.

Wedneday: Recovery Run in the morning. 5 miles.

Thursday: I couldn't force myself out of bed in the morning. The late nights had caught up to me, plus I had a dentist apointment in the morning. By the way, my dentist finally convinced me that I should get my wisdom teeth pulled as there's a cavity starting to form on one of them. Crap. Anyways, I ended up running in the evening after the sun went down. I decided to run this by feel with no watch nor HR monitor since it was too dark to see my watch anyways and I don't like wasting the battery by pushing the light button. It felt pretty good and I was going at a pretty good clip. I only ran for an hour or so and figure I did between 6 and 7 miles. There's a big difference between running in the morning and in the evening. It seems much easier in the evening.

Also I local running store was having a sale, so I checked it out and bought a new pair of shoes. I was looking for a stability shoe that was about the same price and weight as the Brooks Adrenaline 6, but that wasn't the Adrenaline. I wanted to experiment with another shoe that might be able to give me a bit more wear. I ended up buying the the saucony omni grid 5. Never tried them before, but they felt pretty good. I serious looked at the Asics GT-2110, but there were a bit on the heavy and expensive side. With all this training, I figure I'm giong to be going through a couple of pairs a year and went to spend as least as possible. Another good thing is that this store is finally selling the Polar strap for my HR monitor! Only problem was they had only the small size whereas my strap is medium. I wasn't sure if the small would fit me so I went home and measured my chest (Do women do this?) and I think I just might be able to fit into the small. Will have to go back this week and buy it. Also picked up some Gu's that were on sale. Buy 12 and get 6 free. 18 Gu's for $20. Just have to get used to the taste now.

Saturday: 4 mile recovery run. Tried out my new shoes for the first time. No complaints. Will probably do only recovery runs in them until my other pair wears out. Between the two pairs, I hope that it'll last me till the taper, where I'll probably decide to either get a new pair of saucony's or go back to the adrenalines (which are ligher) in prep for the marathon.

Sunday: Long run of 12 miles. It's weird. When I do a general aerobic run, I can get my pace down to 8:30 min/mile at the same HR as my long run, but when I do a long run, I run slower. It's most likely due to the temperature since I do my general aerobic runs starting at 6:30am whereas my long run today started at 8:30am. It could also be a mental thing where my mind thinks I should be running slower. It'll be interesting to see once it gets cooler what my paces will be for these long runs.


Total for the week: About 35-36 miles.