Week 5

Sometimes I feel like I'm doing so much that I forget that my real focus here is 1/2 Marathon Training. For my first 1/2 Marathon it was all about surviving the weekly running. While I always did my cross-training, my cross-training was spent sitting on the recumbent bike at the gym reading. Don't knock it, I get a lot of reading in this way! This time around I've added swimming and real biking. Let's just say I'm always tired and I appear to always be sore somewhere! This is good for me, at least this is what I keep telling myself. I'm increasing my overall fitness and preparing for future races. But as I sat on the trainer yesterday for a 40 minute spin and my shoulders ached I really missed the recumbent bike and my book.

This week we finally saw winter in Northern California. Which means almost all of my workouts were in the rain. Tuesday's 4 mile was in the rain and the return trip meant headwind and rain, I'm so lucky! Wednesday is only 30 minutes of cross training so lets just say I got my reading in. Thursday was another 4 miler in which I experienced the same as Tuesday, but this time I stopped to take a photo of the new waterfall along the path.

Just for kicks I decided to to do a double work-out Thursday and swim also. I actually really want to get one swim in per week in addition to my lessons so that I have a chance to work on things before I meet with my coach again. Sadly, the only day to really get it done is on a run day. But swimming makes you forget about your leg pain and think about shoulder pain, so that's good. I'm doing lap swim at the Soda Aquatic Center until my pool opens next month. This is a ginormous pool, this photo doesn't do it justice, I should take a panoramic photo as this represents about a third of the pool.

So yes, I swam in the rain on Thursday as well and then again on Friday during my swim lesson. The good news is that the my coach says he saw huge improvement from last week. Of course, I am paying him, but I'll take a compliment where I can get it. Just when it all starts to make sense he throws me something new to work on and it all goes to shit. That's okay, now I have something to work on in the pool this week.

After a girl's night out "meeting" on Friday, I came home to find my Felt set-up on the trainer ( I <3 my husband). With more rain on Saturday I was planning to ride inside and test out my new Garmin cadence/speed sensor. After the hubby set it up for me it synched nicely with my 610 and I know have accurate bike data for when I use the trainer.

Finally, it's Sunday which means long run day! I taped up my legs (all this extra sport is causing my leg to hurt again) threw on compression socks as well and headed out for my 6 mile run. I've been trying hard to focus on just getting the miles in and not worry about pace. I should be taking it easy and if I don't watch my pace I have a tendency to  run too fast and burn out. Since I'm still running with intervals it was important for me to be able to run all of my run interval and not need to walk during them because I was going too fast. I did really well this today and while I was at first disappointed with my overall time, I realized that I had made a plan to run slower and I did.

I cleaned up and put on my compression tights and headed out. What I've discovered is that I do so much better if I can get out and do something to recover rather than just sit at home. I think the walking around helps my muscles recover better. Of course, that usually involves shopping and I may be in trouble for all of the things that I really NEEDED today, but my legs feel good so far, so mission accomplished.

Week 5 Totals:

Swim: 1029 Yards (I'm swimming in 2 different sized pools - not drowning mid lap)
Bike: 16.90 miles
Run: 14 miles

It's race week next week and I'll be running the Oakland Running Festival 5k.