Christmas Week

Happy Hump Day! I have been mixing it up all over the place this week, but it has been like Christmas for me, and there is nothing better than Christmas in the summer. I have had 3 packages come in for me this week, it has been so fun! Several running related things, a fun new lunch bag, and this huge beauty...

That's right, almost 3 years after I graduated from college I finally have my diploma framed! I have been begging everyone for a diploma frame for every holiday since my graduation, and John bought it for me for my birthday this year! It came today and was sitting waiting for me when I came home! It is a lot bigger than I thought it would be, but it is beautiful and continued with my Christmas-like week of presents!


Now onto the running portion of the program! Since this is a cut-back week, and a race week, My schedule was to run Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then race Friday and Saturday. Well with my new daily schedule and a decent amount of time on my hands, plus my need for constant activity I knew I would not be ok with just sitting still on a Thursday- no way! So I decided to split my easy Tuesday run in half and do half on Tuesday and half on Thursday.

Tuesday - 4 miles in 37:14, 9:18 average pace, I found it easy to start out quick when I knew I didn't need to pace myself for over an hour.

Wednesday- 7 miles in 1:02:37, 8:56 average pace.
I was just not feeling the track, so I headed to the gym to get in some speedwork on the treadmill. Once I started my warm-up I had this overwhelming desire to do some pick-up miles instead of the 800s on my schedule so I figured why not, since I wasn't taking a full rest day, it was probably best not go balls to the walls with 6x800.

Instead of the 6 miles I ended up doing 7, it just felt great at that point I was working with a new plan. I really wanted to a medium distance today and run consistently not all the stop and start of normal speedwork. I decided I would alternate a quicker mile and then a recovery mile, with the first pick-up at 5k pace and then getting faster with each one.

Mile 1-  9:44
Mile 2-  8:29
Mile 3-  9:28
Mile 4-  8:16
Mile 5-  9:16
Mile 6-  8:05
Mile 7-  9:19

I really enjoyed this run, after the short distance yesterday I was ready to get back to my 60+ minutes of running, I am actually kind of nervous about these short races this weekend, I don't really like running short anymore- never thought I would say that!