Week 1 Review

You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.

--Frank Lloyd Wright                                 

The setup:
My training plan, as put together by my Coach, is broken into 3 phases. The first phase is a little less than glamorous (okay, it's actually going to be pretty fucking boring to read about. I apologize in advance). It's mainly going to be base building, with one weekly speedy-ish workout to serve as a friendly reminder that yes... running fast still hurts and still sucks ass. Oof.

So, instead of doing a day-by-day breakdown in this first cycle, I'm just going to hit the key workouts and then talk about the week generally.

Key Workouts in Week One:
Fast shit: 6 miles total with the middle two miles @ 8:45-9:00ish.
Long shit: 10 mile long run.

For my speed workout, I ran with The KoB on what has become our weekly Wednesday night runs. The first 5 minutes sucked and the last 5 minutes sucked, but the middle 7ish minutes weren't too awful! I ended up hitting them a little faster than planned (8:32 and 8:22). But rest assured, bitches, this overachieving will not last long. The only way I could run that fast was because I knew it was only for 2 miles. Overall, I was pretty happy with the run and the effort.

The long run was a bit of a shit-fest (uh literally). Since July, I've been getting out to Percy Warner Park once a week to get my ass kicked on the hills. So, that's where I did my long run this week. You know you're going to have an awful run when you can't make the 15 minute drive to the park without stopping along the way to go to the bathroom. Ugh. I blame Friday night's delicious, but dangerous fried jalapenos at Suzy Wong's. Anyway, the run was a mixed bag. One minute I felt pretty decent and then the next minute I felt like my duodenum was trying to make it's way out of my belly through my skin.

Ugh.

Overall, the week was kinda tough. I mean, not like gouging-my-eyes-out-tough, but harder than I thought a 35ish mile week would feel. Boo. By Thursday I was happy for the slow buildup and was coming to realize that this is why I have a coach. Because otherwise, I get too excited and do too much, too soon and end up burned out about a month into training.

I ended up with 38 miles for the week (the overage was pre-approved by coach).

1 week down... only 21 to go! Holyfuckinghell.