Friday night I swam a strong 2700 yrds - it was a crazy workout based on 300s with a mix of intervals. I felt pretty good and even on the last hard sets I stayed strong and kept my pace up. When I left of course it was snowing... there was about an quarter of an inch on the grass by the time I got home. Luckily nothing was sticking to the roads.
Saturday I had a 12 mile run as my last longer run before Vancouver Half Marathon in 2 weeks. Lucky for me Steph and Kyle (who are both doing Vancouver) also wanted to go long. After confirming in the morning that there was not to much snow we headed out to the Carnation to run on the Snoqualmie Valley Trail. The temperature on the drive out was 37°F - but it was not really raining or anything. My goal was 12 miles at 8:30 pace or less but once I got started I remembered that the entire way out was a gradual uphill. The first mile or two I paced off of Kyle and never really let him get to far in front of me so it was really strange when my garmin said my first mile was over a 9 min pace - Kyle never runs that slow.. and the second mile was even slower. I just kind of assumed that my swim the night before and that I was running on trail was effecting my times and did not really stress to much about it just kept pushing. I heard Kyles garmin at mile 1 and mine did not go off for quite a while later.
I ate a gel at mile 2 and my stomach was really unhappy - I just tried to breath deep and get past the upset feeling. Which worked till I needed to eat again at mile 4ish and 7 when I had to do it all over again - but I know well enough I need to eat or I crash so I forced it down. I drank cytomax between eating which helped settle my stomach but it was never really happy.
I kept my effort level in between moderate and hard but my garmin said my pace was still rather slow. I never really let it get to me though even though the miles seemed to last forever at times.
I saw Kyle and he was surprised to see me so soon and cheered me on saying great job sort of stuff. My garmin said I was only at mile 5 so I thought he had 2 miles on me but that is not unusual. I ran out till about what i thought was 5.75ish miles - I was tired of running uphill and wanted to start back - I figured I could run a bit past where we started and still get my milage. Now last year we ran the same trail a couple of times and turned around after one of the bridges but I could not rember how far we were running - I went way past that bridge...
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I don't know if you can tell in the picture but it was snowing.. When I turned around I realized I actually have never been so far out on the trail. Steph waited for me at the bridge not wanting me to be out there all alone. It was so wonderful to be running downhill my legs were so happy - finally I had a sub 8 min mile. I wanted to be able to get back to an average of an 8:30 min pace so I picked it up a bit and took advantage of the downhill as much as I could. I had planned on eating again at mile 10 but my stomach did not feel good at all so I just kept drinking cytomax and gave up on gel for the last couple of miles. I knew I was going to be over the planned time of 1:42 so the last 2 miles I really tried too pick it up and just be done with it. When I got to where we started my garmin said I was only at 11.5 so I ran out and back and then down a side road to get that last .5 mile.
Now after I got home and talked to Kyle and how surprised he was that I was so close to him at the turn around and then that I finished so much later than him.. He said he turned around at the bridge at 6 miles... the bridge that I ran way past.. So I'm not sure what happened to my garmin but I mapped it out on Gmaps Pedometer which said I ran 13.5 miles not 12.. So instead of my run being slow - I actually ran a PR of 13.5 miles in 1:50:00 (8:12 average pace) in the cold, on trail - go figure.
Sunday the weather was much the same - snow and rain in the morning - so we slept in and ate breakfast then went over to greenlake area for Kyle to get some bike part, and we went to Speedy Reedy to get a few small things... including a new addition to our household.
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No it is not for me (I wish) it is Kyle's he got a P2C frameset so that he could build it up as a TT bike so that his R3 could go back to being a road bike since he wants to do some road races. That brings our road bike family up to 7 (5 for Kyle and 2 for me). lol He loves his bikes. The hard part for him is that he is actually stripping the R3 of all the components and putting them on the P2C till he can get SRAM Red components for the R3 (I told him he has to wait till next month). Anyway the weather dried out a bit and while he went to an acupuncture appointment I got on my bike and went for a ride around Lake Sammamish. My legs felt sore and heavy but it felt so good to be outside on my bike. I kept my speed around 18 mph and did not push to hard or go to easy. Most important I worked on getting more comfortable with my bar end shifters and being down in my aero bars. I actually got really hot and had to take both my hat and eventually my gloves off - other cyclists were looking at me like I was nuts. We had planned that Kyle would meet me when he was done and we would ride the lake again but it was getting colder and he did not care so we rode back out a while, got some coffee and then headed home. Which includes a hill no matter which way you go. It was good that I was already warmed up because just to stay near Kyle my legs were screaming. The climb was hard but I know that it always is and every time I do it - it will get easier (I learned that last year). Of course it started raining the last mile or two back to the house. So even with the crazy weather I managed to get a 2:15 hour ride in - which is way more fun than sitting on the trainer.
With that I'm very happy that tomorrow is a rest day - no work out except fallowing Coach Colleen online in the Boston Marathon :)
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