Zipping Along

I gave myself some royal treatment this week. A pedicure on Monday, a hair cut on Tuesday (I have bangs again!) and a sports massage on Wednesday evening. Next Tuesday is my 30th birthday, so I am trying to really enjoy the last few days of my 20's.

Following my birthday, I'll be running the Richmond half marathon on the 15th, and then doing a 5K Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving.

Training has been going well. I ran my "first" 20-miler over the weekend at an average pace of 9:32. It's actually my 4th 20-miler, if you count the runs that I did in July, August and September. I have two more planned before the marathon in January, and hopefully one of those will be 22 miles.

I followed Saturday's 20 miler with 11 miles on Monday morning (including hills), 5 miles on Tuesday (including strides), and then 11 miles on Wednesday morning. That's 47 miles over a 5-day period! Wednesday's 11 miles was interesting:

- 2 miles warmup: 9:50 avg.
- 3 miles @ marathon pace: 8:29, 8:29, 8:28
- 4 x 800 Cruise intervals: 7:38 pace for each, 1:30 recovery jogs.
- 3 miles tempo: 8:03, 8:03, 8:00 (8:02 avg)
- Cooldown

The average pace over the 11 miles was 8:37.

I was surprised I made it through this workout as well as I did. I did not expect to be able to complete all three tempo miles at the end, but I did, and I even sped up on that last mile. I'm also seeing heart rate improvement in terms of my HR being lower than it used to be for the same paces.

All I need to do is steer clear of injuries and illness for the next nine days, and I will be ready to set a nice half marathon PR.