Where's the Beach?

I'm a bit behind on a weekend recap, so this will be more like a training lately and things I do other than running kind of post. In other words, random. Random can be good though, right? Ok, good. Glad you're with me. This weekend started off nice and early for me. I knew it was supposed to be really warm again, and humid. Maddie decided to also assist as my early morning alarm clock. Since I was up, I headed on out the door just after 6 am to get in my long run. It started off fairly decent, around 67 degrees with some clouds. The clouds of course ended up clearing off, but thankfully that was near the end of the run. I managed to get in 12 pretty good miles. The last mile and a half was where I was sort of just ready to be done. But, I had some nice views to get me through the miles. I ended up hanging out on my patio reading and recovering for a bit. I mean, keeping your feet propped up on the lounge chair or in the pool counts as recovery right? My sister ended u...

Speed Work Apparently Wednesdays are now becoming speed work days for me. This is only because my new running pal "A" somehow talked me into it. Of course, I do need to add in speed work and it's easier to do when you have a partner in crime to hold you accountable. So, this morning I did a one-mile warmup run over to "A's" house where she has a set route for 800's (1/2 mile intervals). The plan was to do 4 intervals with roughly a 1/4 mile jog/recovery. The first interval kind of sucked. It was still completely dark so that made it a little treacherous. Plus, that first interval is a major shock to the system. Oh, and this time the first interval included the uphill rather than downhill direction. I have no idea what my split was on the first one. Once again I goofed up trying to set the half mile splits. But I finally got it right for the other splits. And I'm pretty sure I will remember for the next speed workout (fingers crossed). My 2nd...

Another 2-a-Day Today Jason and I had planned to do some speed work during our lunch break. I knew it was going to be hot, but at least with the speed work you get a few rests. Right? Like I said, I knew it was going to be hot, I just wasn't prepared for how hot. The heat index was already in the low 90's when we set out on the run at 11:30. At first, the skies were cloudy and there was a strong breeze. Unfortunately, the sun came out in full force mid-run. We ran 1 mile as a warmup to a nearby park before starting the intervals. They ended up being about 1 minute each: slowly start then build speed to 80% max effort for 20 strides (about 20 seconds) then a super easy jog back to the start (about 30 seconds) so we would wait the remainder to round out to a minute. We did 10 intervals total and it actually put us right at a mile. The area we were doing the speedwork at is a grassy area that is pretty shaded. The wind really felt great when we stopped, but not so awesome w...

Speed Work We had another cool and mostly cloudy day. It was supposed to be sunny and upper 70's. But it was only about 65 and overcast when we set out for a run at 11:45. We decided to actually, willingly do speed work. I haven't done any real speed work/drills since probably January. We've done a few tempo runs, but those were mostly unplanned. We warmed up for a mile while heading to our destination. Since we weren't on a track with marked distance (ran on a park lawn), we measured distance by our strides. Jason had this workout from years ago - it's similar to striders or gentle pickups. You start off easy then gradually increase speed to about 90% of max effort. Most suggest ranges of like 80 meters (just one example). Then a brief rest before repeating. We counted our strides for right foot strike. Jason was counting 20 (so 40 steps total) and I chose 25 because 20 didn't seem to get my little legs very far ;-) We repeated 12 times total then ran an...