Running Program - Week 13

It was a great week for running. That actually surprises me to say considering how awful I was at staying up late many, if not all, nights and feeling like a zombie just about every day. But I managed to get a run in every day, even if it was at 11:30 or almost midnight. Which is absolutely terrible and makes me wonder how much easier the runs would have felt had I given my body sufficient rest for more recovery.

Another interesting event this week happened with my Friday recovery run. I had stayed up late Thursday night and woke up late Friday morning. But I knew that if I was going to be completely rested for my long run on Saturday that the Friday run needed to be in the morning. So I hopped out of bed and quickly got ready to run the 22 minutes on the dreadmill. When I first began treadmill running I would find some free online TV shows (Hulu, Amazon, etc.) or put on a movie to pass by the time. But even doing that it was difficult not to constantly look down at the time and distance on the display. Well, during my last trip to Wyoming, I surprised Kelli with a Nook. I have since started using that to read while I run on the treadmill since it is so thin and fits nicely on our treadmill. I'm able to increase the text so I can easily read while running, and it sits in just the right spot so that it covers the time and distance displays. I've been pretty good at checking my time to make sure I don't go too long, but on Friday the time just flew by. I got so absorbed in the book I was reading (The Time Machine by H. G. Wells) that when I finally checked the time it was already at 27 minutes, five minutes beyond my planned time. I'm thinking I will get a lot of book reading done this winter. :D

I was also impressed with my long run. The same amount of time as last week, but almost 0.3 miles longer. As a result, I'm thinking it's time to up my total time again and slow things down slightly. I may shoot for 25:50:75 and keep the paces around 9:50/9:00/9:20. I may also have to look at doing a "rest" week that tapers back a few weeks to give my body a bit more recovery time.