Ran

I ran last night. 3.7 miles in 36:23. Tried to push the pace a little bit; had two sub-10:00 miles (9:48 and 9:41) and stopped for traffic once. Weather was nice: around 74° F, sunny. I sweated a lot, though.

For this week (beginning Monday) I have just over 7 miles total. I'm aiming for about 18-20 miles total this week. Friday I'll do 4-5, and Sunday I'll have a nice long run, 7-8 miles.

Out of control

I made good choices for food yesterday. Except for the two donuts (a glazed donut after breakfast, and a glazed twist in the afternoon), the giant slice of pizza for lunch, oh, and the feta cheese and honey mustard on the salad, and the four pieces of buttered bread with my roasted red pepper soup for dinner, oh, and especially the cup of cappuccino and blackberry gelato for dessert.

Yeah. Great choices.

Oh, and I started but did not finish my dumbbell workout and otherwise got no exercise yesterday.

Today I am up a half-pound (to 186.5) - but I expect another bounce up tomorrow - and my 30-day trend is back up over 185 (to 185.3) after briefly flirting with being under 185 for several days.

I need to get back to my good eating habits. Today I feel bloated and puffy, and mentally I'm beating myself up.

Easy run

I ran this morning. 3.7 miles in 37:23. Had to stop three different times for traffic. Stoopid traffic. Also walked for 45 seconds or so, twice, during the last mile and a half. Stoopid walking.

Interval run

Yesterday I attempted an interval run. I still would like to work on my speed, and interval runs feel like a good way to do it. But it feels like I failed.

The plan was a mile+ of warmup, running down to the river side where the Springwater Corridor Trail is. The trail is marked off in half-mile increments, is paved and relatively flat, making it perfect for measured running.

Once on the trail, I decided I'd alternate slow, jog-walk half-miles with fast half-miles. I've decided that anything faster than 9:00 miles is "fast".

Last time I did this run, I did three slow and three fast segments. This time, I decided to try four of each. I tried to set my expectations accordingly.

The weather was warm, around 67° F when I left the house, and humid. And even though I had gotten up very early and had a slice of toast with peanut butter and jam to break my fast, I'd then slept in later than I had wanted to and didn't leave the house until 10:30 or so. All of this, I'm sure, contributed to my struggle.

My warmup was exactly 15 minutes, including a stop for water. Then I started out with a slow segment (so that I'd finish with a fast one). First fast interval was 4:26 - barely fast, by my own subjective measure. Then jog-walk for a half-mile, and I'm already sweaty.

Second hard half-mile was done in 4:04 - now that's more like it! That meant that my average for the two half-miles was exactly an 8:30/mile pace.

More walking than jogging, then my third fast attempt, which I did in 4:13 - basically splitting the difference between the two.

Waaaaay more walking than jogging, and I attempted my last fast half-mile. I actually stopped to walk for 20-30 seconds (I think), but then tried to push myself to cross the finish line fast. Sadly, I had messed up and not reset my countdown timer, so I have no idea how fast that last attempt was.

I ate some Shot Bloks and drank some water, and then mostly walked back home, with some jogging up the hill on Umatilla. The whole outing was over an hour and twenty minutes. Next time I'll have to keep better track of my time, and push myself harder on the "slower" segments.

After work special

I ran tonight after work. My 5-mile loop, which is actually 5.4 miles according to "teh google".

I kept a nice, steady pace in the 10:20-10:30 range, even including the several times I had to stop for traffic so I could cross the several busy streets. I guess that's one advantage to running early in the morning; fewer cars on the road to dodge.

I also stopped for water once.

The temperature was around 70° F and it was a little humid but not that bad. Wore my trusty Brooks Adrenaline 6 GTS, shorts and a short-sleeved tech shirt.

Finished in 56:59, which is almost exactly a 10:31 pace average.

Two runs

Tuesday's run: 3.69 miles in 37:25

Thursday's run: Postponed until later today due to rain.

Stupid rain.

Long run, a little bit faster

This morning I did 7 miles. It was warm-ish (72° F), humid, and overcast. I'd had around 1600 calories yesterday, 200 of those were gin. This morning I got up at 5:00 AM, ate some toast with peanut butter and blackberry jam (263 calories), drank around a half-liter of water, then two hours later set out for my run.

I tried, oh, how I tried, to keep a steady-fast pace. But I kept seeing 10:30-11:00 miles for the first half. And I took frequent walking breaks on the last half.

I finished in 1:17:10, 50 seconds faster than last week's effort, and an average 11:01 pace.

Short fast run

I have wanted to push my speed lately. After months of just working on distance without much emphasis on speed, building back up my endurance and aerobic conditioning, I'd like to get back to where I was last year, sooner rather than later. I've been doing some interval training for the last month or so, and a while back I tried a short burst of speed (around a mile at 8:30 pace is fast for me)... but basically my routine has been a long run every other weekend, an interval run every other weekend, and 3-4 miles at slow-ish 10:00-11:00 pace a couple of times during the week. It's all I've had energy or inclination for.

But I was inspired by my 10:00 pace 5-miler last Wednesday, so this morning I wanted to push. I planned on doing 3 miles - warmup for a half-mile, then 2 solid miles at a 9:00 pace, then cooldown for the last half-mile. I thought it would be hard, but achievable.

And it was, it actually was. I had my watch on, to keep track of time and pace, but because my cheap running watch only keeps track of total time and the current split time, I'm not sure exactly how fast my fast section was. I remember a couple of half-mile segments being in the 4:24-4:43 timeframe, and the final cooldown was 5:59 (I had to walk a bit), and the total time for all 3 miles was 30:16. I think I achieved my goal, though. Felt good.

Basically it was a short tempo run, run at 5K pace.

Sunday I'll do a long interval run. Looking forward to it!