Week 13 of Half Marathon Training (3.11-3.17)

Previous Summaries

Planned Mileage: 3, 6, 3, 11 (for a total of 23 miles)

Monday: I was on recovery from my really long run. My hips could really feel it. I did walk to Sprouts and Trader Joe's though. 

Tuesday: I went swimming and then running.
For swimming I decided to try to do the zero to a mile type of training to get better. I stuck to only 12 breaths recovery. I swam a half mile. I swam 100 m (or maybe this pool is in yards), took 12 breaths, and repeat. But this time I did a lot more back stroke. Back stroke is a huge recovery for me. I think I did about half my lengths in freestyle, a few in breaststroke, and the rest in backstroke. The zero to 700 suggested switching to backstroke instead of stopping.  I had to get out to go to the bathroom so I did that at 1/4 mi. My first 1/4 was in just under 15 minutes and my second trail was 15 minutes. Granted I get into the pool and take awhile to even get under the water so it was probably more like 14 min or less for the first 1/4.    I'm getting better and doing more freestyle. I noticed if I tried to breath every 3rd stroke instead of every other stroke, it really helped me. But sometimes I screwed that up and choked on water. 

As soon as I was done swimming, I changed, and went for my run. It was really hard. I was fighting just to keep at 9:30 pace. I was burping from the water I choked on.  I could also feel the water in my chest.

I know that for a triathlon you go from swimming to biking to running but I will still be tired when I start to run so I figured it was OK to go from swim to run.  At least I was doing something. I was shocked at how hard running was. Granted I'm awful at swimming and I hope by July, I'm not so awful at it. I really need to swim more than once a week or once every other week and maybe I'll improve.

The triathlon is a half mile swimming, 16 miles biking, and a 5k running. Today I did a half mile swimming in 29 minutes and 5k running in 28:52. I still haven't even biked 16 straight miles. My longest was 14.3 miles. I don't tend to bike with Dave on the weekends because he is trying to bike more to work so then I just don't go biking. I'm not as concerned with biking but I should try to bike after I swim.

Wednesday: I took a rest day. My legs were fatigued in the morning.

Thursday: I walked  to get my blood at 8 am. I almost went swimming but went to Safeway instead. 

I met Hilary to run at 5:15. We tried a new loop that involved the hill we ran before. This was a much longer way up. It took a quarter mile to get up instead of .05.  Man was it tough to run up the hill. We ran the hill 4 times then ran around a small loop. The mall loop started with running the 5 mile loop but then instead of continuing we turned where the 4 mile loop joins up with the 5 mile loop. That loop ended up being 2.75 mi. 

We were originally going to do 6. Then I said if we did the hill we should do 3. Then we thought we'd do 4. Then when we finished the loop 4 times and the lower loop and it was 5 miles, we decided to run the hill going the other way twice so that we got to 6 miles. 

Clockwise is .34 to get up the hill and counterclockwise is .24 to get up the hill. 

The last two loops were rough. I could feel it in my glutes. Hills are hard. I could only run the hill at about a 10 minute pace and it felt tough. I wish I realized that loop earlier. Granted it's only a little over a half mile so it would get boring to do too much of the workout that way. I cannot believe how a year with running only on flat surfaces ruined me. 

While we ran the hill, I ran on the outside of the loop. Then I ran on the outside of the flat loop. Yet my watch was still a lot less than Hilary's. I'm using her number for marking down my monthly mileage.

Friday:  I took yet another rest day. I'm a slacker.

Saturday: I took another rest day. I thought I was a slacker before but it got worse. I did do abs at night.  

Sunday:  I was going to do a long run but then postponed it then when I was about to turn it into a short run, Dave wanted to go out to dinner so then I didn't run. I had another rest day.

Total Running Mileage: 9.52 mi 
Total Biking Mileage: 0 mi
Total other things: a few walks,  1 swim, , 2 core workouts.

Summary: I really slacked off this week. This is a bad bad trend. My race is only a couple weeks away. I was going to do my long run on Monday so I held off posting this because I would have felt justified if I did that but then I didn't. Once I fall off the wagon, I really fall off.  The week did start off well. On Monday I was still sore so a rest day was justified. On Tuesday I had a tough workout so a rest day on Wednesday was justified. Then on Thursday I had a second tough workout. But after that I did nothing.