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Wasabi’s Fantastic Week of Training! 9/23 through 9/29

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Sunday, 9/28 was National Coffee Day! Saffron and I celebrated with a long run and some pumpkin spice lattes! How did you celebrate?

Sunday, 9/28 was National Coffee Day! Saffron and I celebrated with a long run and some pumpkin spice lattes! How did you celebrate?

Well friends, it has been another fun week of training here in Wasabi world. The sweaty southern summer has finally given way to lower humidity and cooler temps, and that has been a real game changer for my average pace as well as my general enjoyment of running. This week I logged a grand total of 50.92 miles, and you read all about them here!

Monday, 9/23: 4 Easy Miles Lately I have been doubling up on Mondays just to boost the total weekly mileage a little, but after a wild weekend that included a XC race, a long run and epic 5th birthday sale/celebration at the running store where I work, complete with a dunk tank, beer and junk food galore, 4 miles with the run group at work was all I could muster today. The crowd was small and the legs felt heavy, but the weather was fabulous and I was super glad that I had a running engagement that kept me from cashing it in taking a rest day on that glorious fall afternoon.

Tuesday, 9/24: 7 Easy Miles, Plus Strides This run almost didn’t happen. I was supposed to meet a friend before work to get it done, but when she bailed I decided that it was probably in my best interest to get some extra sleep, given that I was still recovering from epic weekend of running and retail mayhem. I set the alarm to give me extra 30 minutes of sleep. That 30 minutes became hitting the snooze button 12 times, and before I knew it, it was time for my Tuesday Oiselle Team coffee date with Saffron and our pal Allison, and then on to work. By now I was thoroughly irritated with myself for not just getting my arse out of bed and running, but I was eventually able to sneak away from work and get it done. I was really glad I did, too. It started slow, but I continued to feel more alive as I progressed, and I had whittled the pace down to 7:30ish by the last 5K or so. I sometimes doubt my ability to run faster than 8:00 pace when I’m solo, so this felt like a serious win to me. I wrapped up with 4x 40 sec strides and enjoyed a very productive day at work afterwards!

Wednesday, 9/25: 6x 1000 (8.5 miles total)  OMG, I really loved everything about this workout! Fabulous weather, great team dynamics courtesy of my fun-loving local track club, and a pretty strong workout to boot!

The idea was to start out slightly slower than 5K pace and progress down to VO2 max by the end, getting a little faster with each interval. I did a pretty good job of sticking to the plan for my first 2 intervals, but after that, I kind of got stuck at a pace somewhere between 5K pace and VO2 max and that’s pretty much where I stayed for the remainder of the workout. At least I was mostly consistent.

Although I didn’t execute it to perfection, I felt really strong and awesome and I enjoyed the whole track workout experience immensely, so I’m calling it a success.

Thursday, 9/26: Rest day FTW!

Friday, 9/27: 4 Miles at LT Pace, Plus Hills with The Fasties! (9.26 miles total) I’m not gonna lie, I felt pretty dang intimidated when I looked at my training schedule and saw 4 CONSECUTIVE MILES at LT pace on the calendar for today. I really like tempo work, and I’m generally pretty good at it, but I’m also accustomed to getting a nice little recovery break every 2 miles or so. 4 non-stop miles was sounding pretty daunting. Fortunately for me, some awesome fasties from my track club agreed to come out and pace me through it. I wouldn’t exactly call it easy, but with their fabulous company and support, I solidly nailed the tempo miles and even added a nice little fast finish. After the tempo I had 4x 200m hill sprints with 200m recovery. Those were a little tough, but with the help of my fastie cheer squad, I survived them like a champ and felt really great about how this workout went in the end. Woot, woot!

Saturday, 9/28: 1 hour “easy” (8 miles) I put the word easy in quotation marks because our average pace was 7:30 which is far from what I consider to be the recovery zone. But such is life when you are running with speedy fellow-Salty Saffron. The legs were feeling pretty heavy on this one, but I guess that’s not a big surprise given the big day they had the day before and the fact the training calendar promised them an average pace of 30-45 seconds slower per mile than what they were actually made to run. But cheers to good miles, even better company, and my most favorite post-run treat in the world, the maple bacon bar.

Behold the magnificent deliciousness that is the maple bacon bar! I make it a point to eat on every Saturday.

Behold the magnificent deliciousness that is the maple bacon bar! I make it a point to eat on every Saturday.

Sunday Funday! 9/29: 14 hilly miles Saffron picked me up extra-early for our long run because she and her darling fam were high-tailing it out of town later that day for a beach camping adventure extravaganza. I love it when Saffron picks me up for two reasons: (1) This is only time I actually get to experience being punctual and (2) she drives one of those fancy mom Volvo station wagons with the heated seats, which are so clutch on cool fall mornings. But I digress…

Saffron is significantly faster than me and our route was hilly, so I had to work my happy maple-bacon-bar-eating tail off to keep up with her. There were times when I did not do a great job of this, but I enjoyed the company, the weather, and the lovely (albeit hilly) scenery nonetheless. I was pumped to finish with an average pace under 8:00 min on one of the longer, hillier runs I’ve done in quite sometime. Obviously, I had Saffron’s rabbit-ing skills to thank for this.

Afterwards, we celebrated long run success, the return of arm warmers to our running wardrobes and – most importantly – National Coffee Day with some serious pumpkin spice latte consumption at Starbucks!

Looking forward to doing it all again, plus throwing in a little Ragnar DC action next week! Keep on keeping on, Salty Runners!

~Wasabi

Posted by Wasabi. Check out more at Salty Running.


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