Week # 9 Done… and Time is Flying By

I cannot believe it is Saturday again already and we have completed 9 weeks of training toward our half marathon in May.  I have run 90.9 miles since the beginning of January.

It was such a good week!

On Monday I was quite nervous about running 7 miles.  But it turned out really well and I finished very strong and elated!  I did have some cramping in both my feet after I finished stretching, but I managed to walk it off.

Then on Wednesday, we did the Leap Year Virtual Run that was hosted by Erica who writes Life As a Running Mom.  It was good timing as I had planned a 3 mile run for this day so doing Erica’s 2.9 mile run was an easy change.   I completed the distance in just under 33 minutes which is good for me.

Today we repeated the 7 mile route that we covered on Monday. I replaced the battery in the chest strap on my heart rate monitor so I could use it today and I planned to keep the pace at between 75% and 80% of max.  It was actually more like 83% to 85% for most of the way and that felt very comfortable so I didn’t worry about it. 

It was as high as 90% for a couple of minutes when we kicked it up to make  traffic light, and up to 96% during the last couple of blocks as I sprinted to the finish! I like to finish strong at the half, so I keep practising picking up my speed near the finish line each time we run. We completed the 7 miles in one minute less than we did on Monday.

And thanks to some wonderful advice I got this week from so many of you, I have increased my stretching time to 15 minutes after I run, and I am making sure to have a protein-based recovery snack within half an hour of finishing, and I am hydrating well.

Today I came VERY close to having an ice bath after I stretched… but I just couldn’t quite do it!  Perhaps when when the weather gets a bit warmer.

I do think, now that I have decided to get more serious about my strength training too, that stretching is going to be even more important for me.  So, instead of having a REST day on Sunday now, I will do a STRETCHING workout of some kind… maybe some standing yoga poses.  I am heading off to check some blogs to see what I can come up with.  And I plan to do a good CORE workout on Sundays too.

Just another thought… that chart I have displayed at the top of this post is from Daily Mile and I have no clue as to how they calculate the calorie burn… and I don’t care a whit about it so will likely be deleting it from now on.  Even if it is accurate, it only uses my runs and doesn’t reflect anything else I do…..

How do you track your workouts or your runs?

Do you care about the calorie burn numbers?

Almost forgot!  I am looking into foam rolling and have been eying up something called a Tiger Tail... if you use a foam roller, what do you recommend?


Coming back to this post to add a note... found out on March 10th that we hadn't really run the whole 7 mile route either time this week...  ran only 3.35 miles out so that makes the total 6.7 miles each time.  I editted Daily Mile posts, hand-written training log, February results.  Not a big deal but wanted to change these things for the sake of accuracy in my logs.