Such a relief!

It's been a couple weeks since I last posted and I've done a lot since then.  First of all, I've been extremely busy with finals over the last two weeks.  Fortunately, they all went extremely well.  I have managed to keep up the training throughout the finals period but not without cost to the quality of runs. 


A week ago, on Wednesday, December 7th, Kimi and I completed a 5 mile tempo run that went phenomenal.  We ran the 5 miles in 29:36 according to "my" garmin forerunner.  Kimi's Forerunner wasn't quite as nice bringing us in almost 10 seconds slower than that. So on days when our Garmins don't agree, we usually take the average of the two to settle right in the middle.  So 29:41 seems just about right.  We followed that up with an excellent 8 mile run the next day in 54:22 feeling pretty good.  


The following Saturday, we attempted 5 one mile repeats.  They didn't go as well as we had hoped but they weren't terrible.  All of the miles were right around 5:47-48.  *Finals had officially started for me on the Thursday of this week so the long hours of sitting and studying had probably started to take its toll on me.  On Sunday, we ran 11 miles for our long run and it was sufficient being completed in 1:15:22.  The tells me that our endurance is solid and our speed is lacking.  *We'll get to that very soon; we're starting next week actually.   


Along came the final week of finals for this fall semester in 2011 and I knew I had 4 exams (one each morning at 7:30 through Thursday morning) which was going to make this a long difficult, mentally, and physically draining week.  However, we started the week off solid with our runs on Monday and Tuesday covering 8 miles for me on Monday, and 8 miles for me on Tuesday.  Kimi went 7 miles on Monday which I'll explain the significance of that later in this post.  Then along came Wednesday the 14th of December (yesterday).  We had decided to complete a 4 mile Fartlek run which basically means a continuous run where a set time is spent pushing the pace and a set time is spent recovering all while not stopping until the end of the set distance is covered.  Ours was going to be a 4 mile of 2 min pressed and 2 min easy.  It started off okay but then quickly I could feel the fatigue setting into my legs and most of all into my mind.  That's when it got a little ugly for me for a couple of pushes.  I did my best to stay focused but I just couldn't maintain the intensity needed to keep up with Kimi during the pushes.  However, I didn't give up because I know that workouts can often get better if you just hang in there.  I managed to catch back up to Kimi on some of the easy portions and then I was able to dig deep and finish the workout solid right along side her for the final two pushes.  We have had better Fartleks than this one but it didn't end up too bad.  We covered the 4 miles in 25:12 which is right at 6:18 pace per mile.


Finally, Thursday December 15th (today) had arrived.  It was the much anticipated last final exam for the week. I woke up this morning at 5:50 a.m. to do some final reviewing prior to my exam (I like to do this to make sure I have it all fresh in my mind).  At 8:00 a.m. I was done with the exam and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  Now I get two weeks to focus my attention to my running and preparing for a seminar that I'm taking at the beginning of next trimester. 


I mentioned above that I would explain the significance of Kimi going 7 miles on Monday compared to my 8 miles.  The reason I am going further than her some days is because I am trying to get our yearly mileage back to equal.  After 49 weeks of running in 2011, Kimi has managed to cover about 15 miles more than me at this point.  Over the next two weeks, I plan to make up this difference so that we can both proudly say we accomplished the same yearly distance which will be over 2700 miles assuming the final 2 and 1/2 weeks goes as planned.


On one final note, don't forget that Kimi and I will be competing in the Jack Frost 10 mile this coming Saturday.  I'm sure we'll both have plenty of fun things to write about after that race is complete! 

This week has been a good one!

The week started off with some quality 7 mile runs where Kimi and I ran together each day.  Wednesday, We completed a 3 mile tempo/pace run and had a phenomenal run.  Our goal was to run 6:10 per mile since this splits almost right between Half Marathon and Marathon pace goals.  However, out of the ordinary, we ran much better than our goal.  Our first mile started off at 5:55 and at that point, I knew it was going to be a good one.  According to my garmin forerunner, our second mile clipped off 5:48, however, Kimi's clipped off 5:55.  Our last mile clipped off a 5:50 for both of us so on our second mile, we simply averaged the two to make 5:52.  That means our total run was right around 17:40.  This workout started and ended with a two mile warm up and two mile cool down to make a total of 7 miles again.

On Thursday, Kimi and I ran on our own.  I decided to take out my headphones and Ipod so I could listen to some music during the run today.  I don't know how it happened but I had a great run on Thursday.  I averaged 6:41 for 7 miles.  It's been a while since a run like that has happened.  I think the workout the day before woke up my legs to better turnover.  With only two weeks to go until the Jack Frost 10 mile, I hope that our training continues this trend of good run after another.