Half Marathon Training Diaries Week 6: Focus on Recovery

Currently, I’m training for the Salt Lake City Half Marathon on April 13^th. My week 1 post has a comprehensive overview of my goals for this race, my training plan and philosophy, as well as my previous base training before starting this training cycle.

If you’d like to read the previous weekly recaps, here they are:

• Week 1: Kick-off, Goals, and Base Training
• Week 2: Feeling like less than Superwoman
• Week 4: Making Friends with the Treadmill
• Week 3: Easy Week + Sweetheart 5k
• Week 5: Just Keep Running

This week went fairly well, and I’m one week closer to the Salt Lake City Half Marathon!

My knees felt a little funny when I would run at a quicker pace this week and I couldn’t find a local 10k race to do. Thus, I decided to focus on taking it pretty easy this week and allow my body to recover. I’m going to be pushing the miles up in the coming weeks, and I need to be ready for it.

My weight loss has sort-of stalled out this week. I wasn’t super motivated to stick to my calorie plan, so I ended up eating extra things here and there that ate away at my deficit. When we went grocery shopping at the end of the week, I bought lots of good veggies and lean meats to snack on for the coming week! I’m determined to meet my goal of 150 pounds by April 13^th.

Monday

Scheduled: 4 miles easy

What I Did: 4.03 miles at an easy effort + 10 min abs

Dang it seemed SUPER windy on Monday!

Maybe it was just because Spring has hit Utah and I was able to run without my headband on my ears blocking the wind out. Either way…I was trying to listen to my podcasts and the wind seemed to be blowing like crazy and right into my headphones.

I did this run at a truly relaxed pace, averaging 11:35 minutes per mile. After I got back to the house, I added 10 minutes of abs on top of this workout. This included pushups, 30 second planks, bicycles, sit-ups, and leg lifts.

Tuesday

Scheduled: 40 minute tempo run

What I Did: 4.01 miles in 41:06

This run felt really rough.

The first part of the run went fine, and then my stomach started acting up. The faster I increased my pace for the tempo, the worse it got. I actually had to stop and walk several times in the second half of the run. I think I ate my afternoon snack too late in the afternoon, causing the upset.

The other thing making the run feel difficult was that my legs seemed like they just wouldn’t turn over as quick as I wanted them to. I felt like I was going slower than usual. My toes hurt in a weird way by the time I got back to the house, and I’m not sure how to describe it, but I just knew. It was time to retire that pair of shoes.

I was trying to track the miles on these shoes with the Gear Tracker on MapMyRun, but for some reason, the app doesn’t let me add shoes for treadmill workouts logged after the fact. Thus, I’m sure I missed a ton of treadmill miles put on these babies over the winter. But I can feel when they’re done. And these ones were done.

Wednesday

Scheduled: 3 easy miles

What I Did: 3.07 easy treadmill miles + 10 mins leg strength

I pulled out one of my new pairs of Saucony Iso Triumph 4’s from my closet today (I bought 2 new pairs when Dicks had a crazy sale!) These miles were an easy effort, but I was still surprised when my splits were 30 seconds faster than the pace I was shooting for. I averaged just over 11 minutes per mile on this run.

After my run, I did 10 quick minutes of legs. Squats, side leg raises, glute bridge, and calf raises. Then I stretched my calves a TON because they were feeling really tight after this run.

Thursday

Scheduled: Easy run or rest.