Naples Half / Broke Man's WWU Training Week 11

Sunday's race

Welcome to another Weekly Review linkup with Hoho Runs and MissSippiPiddlin. My training cycle focuses on the Paradise Coast Half Marathon. You can read about the race in Week 1's recap. 

Week of Jan 11-17 

Monday: 3 miles, 8:38 pace
Tuesday: 2.3 miles, 8:31 pace
Wednesday: 1 mile, 8:43
Thursday: 5.1 miles, 8:57 pace
Friday: 3 miles, 8:45 pace
Saturday: Broke Man's shakeout run, 1.5 miles
Sunday:  Broke Man's WWU, 3.7 miles, 8:41 pace – recap coming!

Total: 19.7 miles
Total this cycle: 249.5 miles

It was a fall back week, but I fell back a little too much. Eek. My weekly total was supposed to be 25 miles and my long run was supposed to be 7, but I cut runs short for reasons below. A treadmill would have been amazing this week!

Monday's run was supposed to be 5, but I had behind-the-knee pain around mile 2. I tried to stick it out, but it got tighter as I went. I'm thinking it was a result of dodging ice Sunday and Monday. I ran home and did a ton of stretches. It went away.

Tuesday's cool moon

I worked from home Tuesday (too lazy to get dressed and go outside). Alex came with me for the first mile, but bailed before we were done because the "feels like" temp was 4 degrees. I ran another loop until our neighborhood was too dark to continue. I felt really good and wanted to keep going but my thighs were starting to tingle and go numb.

Wearing all my glow-in-the-dark stuff

Wednesday was a mile. I ran right at sunset, so I had to get decked out in all of my finest hi-vis gear. The "feels like" temp was 2 degrees and even though I wanted to keep running I tried to be reasonable and go back inside.

The temps rose Thursday, so Alex and I went to a nearby neighborhood for a 45 degree run. I had a tempo workout scheduled, so I ran a mile warm up on the track and took my 3x1mile tempo repeats out on the road with Alex. I found myself running a little fast, but he stopped at a few different playgrounds to do pull ups while I kept running ahead (and tried to reign in my pace). There were a few hills along the way to keep it tough. Once we finished the middle miles we were back at the track and I did my cool down. This was my longest run of the week! Whoops.

Later that night, I stooped down to pick up my tiny dog and my knee hurt! It was terrible. When my leg was bent, the front of my right knee was super tight and there was a stab of pain. It felt like a reverse charley horse. I stretched out, iced it, and decided to see how Friday's run went.

Sunrise Friday

Friday morning I ran one mile to test my knee. The pain was significantly reduced and honestly didn't bother me while running, so I added two more miles. The pain remained, but it was dull and only when I bent my leg at an extreme angle or went up and downstairs. The bad part of Friday's run was how out of breath I felt. I stopped several times during miles 2 and 3. I'm not sure what was going on, but I decided to forgo my 6 miler and finish when I hit 3.

Race director & the shakeout crew

Saturday morning was the official shakeout run for the Broke Man's Winter Warm Up. (I'm an ambassador for the race.) The run only ended up being 1.5 miles. I was hoping for more to bring up my weekly milage! After the run Alex and I helped with packet pickup and getting the swag bags ready. The line was wild! We were there from 10-1 and hardly saw a break in action. Luckily, we were able to relax with a beer once our shift ended.

The big race was Sunday. The Broke Man's WWU has three distances (3.5, 7, and 13.1) and is one of the races I've been training for during this cycle. It wasn't a goal race, but the 7 mile distance was perfectly in line with this week's plan. In the end, I only ran 3.7 miles! I will have a full recap once official photos are available (unless they take too long), but long story short: The first 7 miles include two laps and I was over the course by 3.7. Since it was a low-key event, I decided to take advantage of the ability to cut it short. Plus it was really cold and I wanted some coffee!

Real talk
All-in-all a crappy week distance wise. I tried to schedule around the coldest days and it didn't work out. If I had it to do over (knowing what I know now about the hilly, looped race course) I would have gone to my normal training group on Saturday for 7 miles and still participated the shakeout run.

Grrrr. So cold, but I love Buffs

I must admit I've reached the point in my training cycle where I'm getting tired. I felt pretty terrible at the race Sunday and it wasn't even close to the half distance. Sure the weather this week was very cold and I had weird aches and pains (I also blame the weather for those), but it was an easy week and I should have nailed my miles. I'm hoping I can ramp it back up this week.

I don't think I can get my sub-2 half in Florida because of the temperature difference (I'm a stronger runner in 40-50 degrees), but sometimes I feel like I need to find some powerful motivating force to just get it done at Paradise Coast so I can go back to running for fun. I was really nailing this training cycle and PR-ing like crazy until about two weeks ago. Now I want to hibernate and run 2-3 miles at a time. I'm enjoying my run streak (day 78), but I'm getting a tired of making time for hour-long runs midweek.

Have you ever have a tough week when the milage is relatively low?
Did the weather affect your week?