Boston Training Week 1 Recap

Runs: 5
"Workouts": 1
Longest run: 12.6 miles
XT: 2000 yds swimming, 2 x 1 hour yoga
Total running miles: 39.4

A pretty solid week to start off my Boston training cycle, especially considering the fact that my highest mileage over the previous 3 weeks was 19.1 miles [only raise your miles by like 10% each week? Yeaahh...I don't really agree with that philosophy I guess].  The big news was, even with an almost 40 mile week I had almost ZERO knee issues...SUCCESS!! I felt a couple of twinges in the first 10 minutes of my long run, but I'm pretty sure that had something to do with it being really cold and my not stretching before heading out [naughty naughty, I know].  I'm loosely following Brad Hudson's level 2 marathon plan from "Run Faster" - basically I'm trying to incorporate the workouts that he suggests into my schedule, but adjusting the easy runs and some long runs so that I don't kill myself or my knee.  I was kind of nervous going into my long run since...uh...I kind of haven't run double digits since the marathon? And that was in October? 12 miles sounded kiiinda scary, and then it was cold out, and then I was procrastinating because obviously, what would a long run be without me having to psych myself up for it for 4 hours?  It was somewhat productive procrastination though, because I did start up a new long run playlist...and for me, there's no better motivation than good, new music!  Some highlights from the new mix:

Time To Pretend - MGMT
This Year - The Mountain Goats
Props to my former RA Alex for both of these songs, which I discovered via his "Song Of The Week" feature on his blog, Chasing Something, which is pretty sweet.  I'm pretty obsessed with them both and the chorus of "This Year" - "I'm gonna make it through this year if it kills me" rings pretty true right now because a) it's a new year, duh...and b) it's a new training cycle, and I'm gonna make it through it.
Bad Romance - Lady Gaga
I tried soooo hard not to like this song [I think because the music video and Lady Gaga in general kind of terrify me?]...but ahhh it's so addictive!
Inch - Charlotte Martin
I couldn't find the video for this but anyway...I LOVE Charlotte Martin and this is one of my favorite songs of hers, kind of forgot about it until now.  It's good for running up a hill..."am I an inch away from heaven? Just a little higher now..."
King of Pain - The Police
This is my current running song obsession! I found it by aimlessly hunting through people's running iMixes in the iTunes store and yeah...I'm kind of in love.  Is it the beat and crazy xylophone thing going on in the background? Is it the lyrics? I have no idea but it's been in my head like...nonstop.

OK so enough musical business - I'll keep you all updated on my new running jams though.  I'm planning on adding 2-3 new songs to the mix every week, ya know, keep things fresh and exciting! I know there are some people out there who aren't big advocates of listening to music while running, but whatever...I am not a purist, and if listening to music motivates me to get my butt out the door/to keep running hard when I don't want to? That sure works for me!  Anyway, the new running mix must have helped because my long run was a success! Ohhh man I was relieved. I tried sort of a random new route which turned out to be the best idea EVER because I started having some stomach troubles around mile 5 and was sort of concerned about the lack of public bathrooms [no way was I running off into the snow - way too obvious to traffic! haha]..and then a long run MIRACLE!  I ran past the Chestnut Hill mall...now there are pretty much no public bathrooms anywhere in this city, but at a mall it's pretty much a guarantee...so thanks for being there, mall, and saving my ass, literally. :)  The rest of the run was pretty uneventful except I almost added an extra mile and a half on by running around the reservoir again...that would have been such a fail!  I was thinking "wow, my legs are really tired, do I seriously have like 3 miles to go? That doesn't really make sense...I've been going for 1:20, I hope it's not going to take that long for me to run 12 miles? Oh wait, I'm actually just an idiot...it all makes sense now"

So I feel much better about my training life now that a) I made it through a ~40 mile week with no knee issues and b) I made it through my somewhat ambitious long run without dying. The rest of this training cycle should be no problem, riiiight? I'm probably going to eliminate one of my 2 XT days sooner rather than later, and maybe do some kind of 3-4 mile recovery run + yoga day instead. 

Apparently my body decided that it was cranky at me for running outside for so long on such a cold day, because on Monday I felt like I was coming down with something and Tuesday was hit with a full-on cold - FAIL! I really wanted to do my planned 5 miler, but ended up napping for 4 hours after I got home from work, then definitely feeling like it was a bad idea when I woke up.  So my second XT/off day for the week is now used up - luckily I seem to be on the road to recovery as I did a pretty sweet 8 mile workout with 4 miles of fartlek on the treadmill today that went way better than I expected!  I have a confession to make: I'm warming up to the treadmill for some speed workouts..ahhh I never thought I'd see the day.  But since I don't have a Garmin or any other fancy device that will actually tell me my pace, and I'm not a great judge of effort, for things that say "run HM pace" or "10K pace", it's really nice to know that I am indeed running that pace.  Also the treadmill isn't covered with ice or packed snow...which is, you know, kind of nice when you're trying to do a speed workout and not die haha.

Hmm...well in non-running related news, nothing too exciting is going on in my life haha...does anyone who reads this watch LOST?  I remember when I knew a bunch of people who watched it and I was like..meh...that totally doesn't seem like the kind of show I would ever watch or get into.  Well, the BF started watching it online, starting from the beginning,  a couple of months ago and once again I was like "OK cool, now you have a show to watch that I don't want to watch, so I can do other stuff while you watch it". But somehow...I don't know how...I got sucked into watching starting from season 1...and WOW I am hooked.   It's like mind-blowing and ridiculous but completely awesome. I'm almost done with season 5, just in time for season 6 to start February 2! Since apparently all the other shows I watch decided to go on break until March, or maybe the end of time, it's going to be nice to have an actual show to watch on my fail-cable again. :)

Is it really Friday tomorrow? This week went by fast! Have a good one, hopefully I'll be back with more entertaining [and by entertaining I hopefully mean AWESOME] long run stories this weekend. :)