Long run and short swim

Yesterday afternoon/evening was an interesting adventure in varying states of exhaustion. I went for a long run during Coen's hockey practice. I was aiming for closer to 12 miles, but there came a point on Old Tecumseh when I would have had to cross the road, which was sort of busy, and then run a bit and come back and cross the road again, and I was at mile 5 and tired and just turned around. So I only got 10 miles. In the evening, when I was talking to Henry about it and voicing my concerns that I hadn't run far enough, he just sort of laughed like literally nobody thinks, "Man I ran 10 miles today I don't think it was far enough". And I guess he has a point. I finished fairly strong (my last mile split was much quicker than the rest, which was fairly smooth paced throughout) and I didn't feel like I was going to collapse or die at the end, so I think I have the extra distance in me if I go for it. It was a sort of slow run though which worries me a little bit because I am definitely going to try to take it out around 9:00 pace during the race and for some reason I have no confidence in whether or not I'll have the ability to hold that. We shall see...

Yesterday's Afternoon Run Workout: Long run, 10-12 miles.
Summary: 10.09 mi, 1:38:39, 9:47 pace.
Pace splits by mile: I didn't turn my auto lap timer on until about 2 miles in, so the first two mile splits are the same pace value. 9:37, 9:37, 9:57, 9:58, 9:52, 9:47, 9:56, 9:57, 9:52, 9:18, 8:54.
Hit rate: 9/11 (81.8%)

So in hindsight I realized that I took a slightly different route than what the race course will be, but it's close enough to be a good preview of what race day will be like. The nicest thing about Windsor running is that it's super super flat here, which makes holding a pace much easier. The course interestingly felt very long on the way out and significantly shorter on the way in. When I'm racing I'll have to remind myself not to get intimidated by how long things feel on the way out, since everything seems to move quicker on the way back in. Otherwise, it was a solid run. My legs were hurting from the very beginning, but settled into a rhythm and even though it was a slow one, it was one I was happy with given that I had a hard track workout the night before. Fingers crossed that things continue to feel good going into next week. And maybe the back half of my long runs might even get a bit quicker? We'll see.

I felt okay immediately after my run but honestly the more time went on the more exhausted I got. I even fell asleep for a bit while Skyping Henry. So I figured if I continued to be this exhausted I would just skip the pool this morning and take my easy recovery run in the afternoon. But I woke up with enough time to go to the pool, so I did. My left shoulder is really aching, I think it's because of how Coen slept on my arm last night, which sucks. It was giving me a lot of problems during backstroke and kick and so I didn't push it too hard. I was also feeling generically lazy so I kept the set short and easy. It was sort of a cop out swim to be honest, but I'm happy enough about having just showed up when I really didn't want to that I'm willing to accept it.

Today's Morning Swim Workout:

• WU: 1000 SKIPS
• Main Set:
• 10 x 75 free pull @ 1:30
• 6 x 75 free swim breathe 3/5/7 by 25 @ 10SR
• WD: 100 swim, 200 kick
• Total Distance: 2500 SCM (55 min)

Hit rate: 10/12 (83.3%)

I'm slowly crawling my way back up to 90% in terms of hit rate. Above 80% though which is nice. I'm altering my schedule to cross out tomorrow's morning swim. It's a function of two things, I want to give my shoulder time to get better and I also want tomorrow's run to be high quality and focused. I have to sacrifice the extra training volume for the quality because Coen doesn't have hockey on Friday so I don't have a solid period of alone time where I can take my run unless I do it after dinner (which generally sucks because I don't usually have enough time to put enough time between dinner and my run) or in the morning before everyone is awake. And I generally swim in the morning. So the swim is probably going to be sacrificed in the interest of making sure my run workout remains high quality. And the priority right now is the running, so I don't feel too bad making that call. I'll try to get a few swims in next week as well. As of right now, the swimming is just some base work before I try to commit to very early morning masters practice once I'm back in STL anyways so I'm not going to stress too much about missing a single swim.

On the calendar for this afternoon is an easy recovery run. I'll aim for somewhere in the 3-5 mile range, nice and slow and even 9:30-10:00 pace (or slower). (I'm setting these standards now to make sure that I don't end up running a negative split 6 miler that finishes with sub-9:00 paced miles because I feel like working harder. Today is an easy day, it has to stay easy so that I have fresher legs in the tank for tomorrow's workout. It's important that I get tomorrow's run right, which means I have to commit to doing less today in order to recovery properly.) Yay! (:

Much love,

Jess