5k PR - 18:57
Mile PR - 4:57
8th week of training.
Previous weeks - 35, 24, 40, 38, 50
Goal - 60 miles
Monday - 10.02 miles total
AM - 6 miles at 6:46 pace. Felt pretty good.
PM - 4 miles at 7:25 pace. Super easy. Subconsciously kept trying to speed up, but kept telling myself it was a recovery run. Very relaxing.
Tuesday - 10.01 miles total
AM - 6 miles at 7:01 pace. Easy.
PM - 4 miles at 7:02 pace. It was hot at this point in the afternoon, but otherwise it wasn't bad.
Wednesday - 9.1 miles at 6:37 pace. Opened up my first mile at 6:20 pace. Initially, I was scared I was going to crash really bad, since I hadn't planned for Wednesday to be that fast, but I decided to just go with the pace. Felt amazing. Really happy with how it turned out.
Thursday - 10.05 miles total
AM - 6 miles at 7:05 pace. Wanted to keep the pace decent after Wednesday's effort.
PM - 4 miles at 7:17 pace. Decided I had earned a recovery run. Felt good.
Friday - 10.02 miles total
AM - 4 miles at 7:10 pace. Legs felt sorta heavy, and didn't want to push anything, so I just stuck with it.
PM - 6 miles at 6:54 pace. Wanted to get a decent paced run in before my long run on Saturday. Felt good.
Saturday - 14.63 miles total.
Initially, I had just planned for a 11 mile run, however, my coach had different ideas. He wanted me to lead some of the new girls on our team around one of the loops on a nearby trail so they'd be able to run it alone when pre-season starts. Loop ended up being 3.43 miles. Pace was around 10:05, but it varied a lot. Super super easy.
Right after I was done with that, I headed off on my 11 miler. Normally, I like to keep them a bit faster (around 7:10), but since I had increased mileage so much this week, I didn't really want to push anything. I got a bit lightheaded towards the last 3 miles, but I think it was just dehydration. Ended up being 11.25 miles at 7:33 pace, which felt pretty easy.
Sunday - Rest day.
Total - 63.83 miles.
Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out. The mileage increase wasn't as tough as I thought it'd be. I think I'm going to bump up my mileage a bit next week, and then keep it there the rest of the summer. Ideally by August, I'd like to be totally comfortable with my mileage, and start trying to increase the quality of the runs.
Things I wasn't entirely happy about this week
- The spread of my doubles (6 miles vs 4 miles). The doubles seemed sorta pointless at sometimes. The only reason I really did them was because I've never been this high in terms of mileage before (coach normally keeps us capped at 20-25 miles per week during xc season), and I wanted to give my body some more time to recover. I think they'll be worthwhile next week though, since I'm planning on doing 7 miles AM, 5 PM, which feels a bit more justifiable to me.
- Work. I thought I was done last week, but the camp director said they needed help, so I got roped back in for a week. I know it's a better summer job then a lot of kids have, but supervising middle schoolers from 8 to 5 is pretty tiring.
- Long run pace. I was hoping for something a bit faster, but after all I've been through this week, I decided to just take it easy. I'm hoping to take it a bit faster next week though.
Looking forward to next week, and pre-season. We're officially allowed to start practice on August 15th, which is only 25 days away. Very exciting stuff.