TM...HR...PR...MP

Are your heads spinning from all the acronyms? Let me break last week (9/8 - 9/14) down for you, acronym by acronym......

TM: Last Tuesday, I had to run on the treadmill and you all know how much I dislike the treadmill. But I actually had a great run and found a way to beat the boredom. I like to call it "pyramids." After a 1.5 mile warm up, I set the treadmill to a comfortable (but not too easy) pace. Every minute for 10 minutes, I would increase the speed by 0.1 mph and then work my way back down in the same way. I did this a couple of times and its a great way to kill 20 minutes on a TM without getting bored. Finish up with a mile cool down and I was looking at a 7 mile run.

HR: After last weekend's long run in the humidity (see last post),I tackled the Newton Hills again on Wednesday for my 14 mile medium-long run. It was a cool night and I decided to turn my Garmin so that I couldn't see the pace and run based on feel. I felt great the whole run and finished with an average pace of 8:55 min/mile but even more impressive was my average heart rate (HR)- 159....crazy low for me especially with the 5 major hills I tackled.

PR: Last Thursday was the final race in the Let's Run Series that I have posted about before. It was a cool night and I wanted to go for a PR but didn't know how my legs would feel after 14 miles on the hills the day before. My previous PR for this course was 31:42. Luckily Bryan and I were able to get towards the front to avoid most of the crowds. I was feeling good and was in a good groove. Besides a PR I have really wanted to break 30 minutes at one of these races. As I crossed the last bridge, according to my Garmin I had 1.2 miles left and was at 22:xx minutes and thought the sub-30 was out of reach but I could go for a PR. I forgot that my Garmin always measures a little short on this course (I think its because of the bridges it goes under). As I rounded the last corner, there was a race volunteer yelling out the time and I realized I had a shot at the sub-30......I ran as hard as I could towards that finish line and crossed in 30:19!!! Still a 1:20 minute PR and oh so close to that sub-30.....I cursed myself for not pushing harder during the early miles, but was really happy with my finishing time. I know that sub-30 is possible, especially without the 14 miles the day before.

MP: Last Saturday, I had my second marathon pace long run of my training....18 miles total with 14 at planned MP. I ran the first 3 as a warm up with John and then kicked it into MP. Overall I felt really good and the miles were for the most part very comfortable. Fastest was 8:14, slowest was 8:29 (ironically the first mile was the slowest!).....average pace for the 14 MP miles was 8:21. I was very pleased with how this run went and definitely boosted my confidence for race day!

Add in a couple easy recovery runs and I was looking at 50 miles for the week!

PS. In case you are interested, I beat Bryan by 1:30 :)