GCM Owens Corning Half Marathon Training Week 7 & 8

     Jedi and I wanted to start by saying Happy Easter Everyone!  I hope everyone got some time to enjoy the day with family and friends. 

     As you can see from the title, I missed my post last Sunday about how my training was going.  It is funny that these two weeks would be combined together because they couldn't be more opposite of each other. 

     Week 7 training couldn't have gone any better for me.  I got all my miles in, and only missed one cross training and one yoga session.  The only thing that could have made the week go better would have been if the weather would have been better.  I was dodging rain, fog and cold temperatures all week, but despite that I was feeling great.  Normally I like to get up and get my run out of the way otherwise it becomes easier for me to skip it, but for my long run on Thursday, I had to wait till almost 2:00 before I headed out.  I was really hoping it would warm up more that it did, but I dealt with it.  

     Sunday is where things all fell apart for me.  As you might have read in my post on Thursday I had a long three days on my feet at work, along with strength training and intervals to do on Sunday.

     Like I said I have hardly run any miles since Sunday, and I owe it all to my interval training.  I did my strength training before work and headed out to get my intervals done after work.  My hamstrings paid the ultimate price, and by the time I was done, I could hardly walk, let alone run.  I woke up Monday with my legs feeling really really sore and I just knew I wasn't going to be doing any running anytime soon.  

     I skipped all running and all workouts Monday and Tuesday, but Wednesday I decided to give a short 3 mile run a try, at a super slow pace.  I got to the halfway turnaround and realized I was probably not going to be able to finish.  I pushed on, but told myself if the pain and aching got to a 4 out of 10 then I would stop.  I quit at mile 2.5 and walked the last half mile home.  Even though I had to quite early, when I woke up on Thursday my legs were still a little sore, but were feeling better.  It was raining almost all day so I decided to just relax until the it cleared up.  I ended up getting out around 6:30pm and limited myself to 2 miles, which turned out to feel really good, even at the faster pace.

     I decided to give myself Friday and Saturday off and hit it again on Sunday.  It was freaking windy as hell, but it felt so good to not have to bundle up like an Eskimo just to go for a run.  I still had a little light pain in my left hamstring that hung around for the entire run, but was very manageable to deal with. 

     After I got back, Mandy and the boys were ready to go for a walk and I thought it would be a good way to stretch out the post run legs.  Mandy is registered for the 5K that is going on at the Glass City Marathon to give her something to do while I am running the Owens Corning Half Marathon so she needs to get a little training in as well.  We headed out on the bike path at a brisk walking pace with a few spurts of light jogging.  Jedi is starting to get better at walking on the leash and is loving to pick up the pace and get a full run on.  

When we were all done I ate some lunch and enjoyed my Easter splurge on a few Peeps!

 

WARNING!!!! IMAGE MAY BE DISTURBING TO SOME VIEWERS!