Week 13: Trying to Find Hills

Run #2 on Sunday

Happy Sunday! Welcome to another weekly review linkup with Hoho Runs and MissSippiPiddlin. Read more about my fall goal race here. I also have a half coming up this weekend! 

Week of September 5–September 11

Monday: rest; 2 mile walk around UA Arts Fest
Tuesday: 3 miles
Wednesday: 3 miles (hills!)
Thursday: 5.7 miles (smaller hills!)
Friday: rest
Saturday: rest
Sunday: Girls on the Run 5k (race recap) + 5.6 miles (rolling baby hills!)

Total (Running) Miles: 20.4 miles
2016 Miles: 696.5 miles

I had another busy week at work, but it's really the calm before the storm because this coming week should be terrible (yay). Regardless, I managed to de-stress a bit with decent runs and a race! Monday was Labor Day, which I spent doing work, but I also went to an arts festival and got dinner and fro-yo. Yum. Tuesday's run was a bit of a fail because I ate a ton of Chipotle before. There were a few comments last week asking how I run post-dinner and after some self-reflection I realized the answer is "very poorly." I eat right after work because Alex gets home before me and is always hungry... and sometimes makes me dinner.

One of the hills

On Wednesday I convinced him to go outside with me, so we postponed dinner. We did not run together because I did some hill repeats and I can't keep up with him on those. I was hungry (despite a Honey Stinger), but I did a few intense hill repeats and talked to some high school cross country kids who had 12 (!!) repeats. Knowing Alex was only running 2-3 miles kept me from higher milage, but it was productive. My new goal is to increase my weekly elevation gain. Last week was 285ft and this week was 335ft. Success!

Thursday morning

On Thursday I randomly woke up at 6am and got out the door for a run just after 7. I ran a little under 6 miles at an 8:54 pace, which somehow felt "slow" until my ankle started hurting near the end. I wrapped it and took off Friday and Saturday before my 5k race to be safe. (It's fine now. Probably a fluke. Maybe I was running weird.)

The ladies and me after the race with our wine!

On Sunday I raced the Run Like a Girl 5k. You can read my recap here. Spoiler alert: I broke some personal records. A little later in the afternoon I ran along the Scioto River, which is a trail full of small, but rolling hills. The weather was lovely: upper 70s with a nice breeze and low humidity.

So, I guess I'm technically in taper because I have a half marathon next Saturday. Last year the Indy Women's Half was stopped for lightning. They gave us a discount code for 2016, but I assumed I'd switch to the 5k. Welp, because it's super low stress (we're staying at the race hotel and the elevation isn't bad), I think I'm going to treat it as a training run and see how it goes. Of course, now that I've run a faster 5k on a slightly hilly course I kind of want to try to run another PR on something flat. So, don't be surprised if I end up switching to the 5k.... ;)

Have you ever run a race that was stopped for weather? 
Have you ever switched your focus to shorter distances to mix it up? 
Would you run the half or the 5k? (My "goal" half is October 15.)