BQ Training Week 13

This is one of my last weeks of hard training. And there is definitely a sense of urgency driving my runs right now. It's good and bad. Half of me wants to bail cause I'm tired and just want to go home and eat a bowl of cereal and lay on my couch and watch episodes of Parks and Recreation

 

But, I don't because I'm all... OMFG I've only got X amount of weeks left to train for this fucker. I am a true procrastinator at heart, so this is my sweet spot of training.

This week was good. I got most of my runs in. Although... DAMN, I am having the hardest time getting in my mid-long runs on Thursdays. This has been my achilles heel this whole training period. I dunno, I guess by the time Thursday rolls around, I just want to sleep in (so, I do) and then after work I'm always too tired to get all the miles in from work and running all week. It's strange, because those are the runs I used to really enjoy. I used to love going into work knowing that I had ran 10-12 miles that morning. But now, I love going into work after having slept 8 hours. Screw running.

The workouts:
Intervals: 8x800s at 3:30-3:40.
Marathon Pace: 20 minutes at Marathon Pace during a 7 mile run the day before long run.
Long: 20 miles.

Somewhere along these past 13 weeks Tuesdays have become my favorite day. I have NEVER enjoyed speedwork. I never really felt like I got results from intervals like I did from tempo runs, hill repeats, etc. But, all that has changed and my favorite thing about opening my training schedule is seeing what crazy ass set my Coach has planned for speedwork that week.  So, even though I had to do my dreaded 800s, I didn't mind. It was speedwork, yo!

This week was a little different though. The last month or so, every interval workout has kicked my ass. This week, my legs were fatigued, but finally... the fitness was there. I didn't feel like my head was going to explode or that I was going to go into cardiac arrest. Hooray! I did want to saw my legs off, though... so, they were challenging.

 This was probably how graceful those 800s looked.

The marathon pace run went well, too. I love those workouts, too. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

The long run... it went fine, I felt fine. It was just all fine. I didn't run as fast as I would have liked. But, I got in 20 miles and I didn't try to slit my wrists with a broken Colt 45 bottle that I found on the side of the road. So, I call it a win. Also, as a bonus, my friend Liz joined me for miles 12-18. So, that helped break up the run into manageable chunks.

This next week is last week of HARD training. The hay is being tossed into the barn as we speak...