Week 10 for Napa was smack in the middle of my Christmas vacation. I took a couple of days off sandwiched between the Christmas Day and New Year's Eve. We were visiting my Mom-in-law in Arizona. I had to adjust the running schedule and be flexible with the program. It was good call that I moved up my 14 miler to Saturday because Sunday turned out to be super windy. Sunday became a rest day. After running the 14 miler, I was anticipating sore legs from sitting in the car for the 8 hour trip, but I was fine. My mother in law lives by a super long hill so I took advantage of that long grade for a series of hill repeats. TheYasso workout was the quality workout for week 10, but there was no track or flat land available near where we were to complete it. But then again, there's the wonderful hill! I was okay with the switch-up.
My week #10 schedule is below. Red indicates what was actually completed with the switcheroos.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
I must admit when we first drove up to this hill, I thought it would be a challenge to run it. It was a long gradual incline of more than 2 miles long. I thought it would be perfect to run repeats. For recovery I took 2 minutes of walking. Each repeat was 0.20 miles long. The first one, I forgot to hit start. I kept going and going. I thought boy this is taking so long as I waited for my watch to beep but it never came. Finally I looked and it was still on pause. I was bummed because I felt like I was going at a fast clip. Now I will never know how good my effort was. I only have record for the next four repeats: 10:05/9:48/9:31/8:37. I made a conscious effort to try and beat the previous effort, so I ran as hard as I could at each repeat. I am happy with the results.
Tuesday
I've never really taken the time to appreciate walking as recovery. I should do this more often. My mother in law and I walked a gradual hill which took us 1 hour and 22 minutes to complete. It was windy and cold, but we got it done. I was thinking my Achilles would be sore from the hill repeats the day before. Pleasantly it was not the case. I must be doing something right.
Friday
Did a fabulous effort today. I need to do more of these kinds of workouts where I push myself just a little bit. I ran 3.42 miles at a 8:46 pace. Today felt easy and at the same time I was careful not to go overboard as it is after all my first run in two days from vacation.
Saturday
Today's workout took a lot more effort. I was more in tune with the watch keeping an eye on my pace since it is so easy to fall off. For one thing, the temperature was a lot warmer than I wanted. It was my fault, I got up too late. The longer I waited, the higher the temps got. I knew it and I paid for it. I got it done with a 9:15 pace. I was slower 6 seconds per mile. Also I have been thinking more about my 1 minute walk breaks and how I should incorporate it not only on the long runs, but the short runs as well. This way I can figure out my pacing on both slow and fast runs. I knew that if I dropped the walk breaks I could have easily hit the 9:09 pace. I know I can get there, there's plenty of time to practice this.
Sunday
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| Just me and the road... |
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| Say Hello to my little friends: the buzzards |
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| My mistake: turkey vultures |
All in all, Week #10 went well, even with all the switching up. Sometimes we have to be flexible and just go with it. Running doesn't have to be so stressful. If it becomes stressful then, you lose the enjoyment. If there is no enjoyment then it becomes work. And who wants to work?
Happy running!
P.S.
I don't know why some of the text are in black print. I've tried to figure it out and I gave up.
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