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13 Weeks to 13 Miles! OUC Orlando Half Marathon Training: Week 5

Week 5! Can't believe it. After this week, we have a week "off" with no long run on the weekend so I am looking forward to that. Just because getting these runs in can sometimes be difficult. Next time we train for a half, we may want to consider training for two different ones so our training runs don't have to hit each other. Still not sure how we are going to handle the 10+ mile runs towards the end when we both have to get them done PLUS run a household with two young children. A lot of Netflix for them, maybe? Who knows. Anyway, this is not the official halfway point, but we are getting so close. And with this week's mileage, total mileage for training will officially top 50 miles. That is crazy to me. I have never run that many miles in such a short time. I'm a casual runner at best so this training has been a stretch for me. I'm mostly enjoying it though and I'm loving being able to say that I have accomplished this so far.

Monday
Plan: Cross Training, Actual: Absolutely nothing...
I didn't even hit my step goal this day. And honestly, I didn't mind. I just wasn't feeling it. The weather was terrible. Constant rain (that is supposed to be fairly common throughout this week) kept me from even wanting to go outside and walk to get steps. Everything I got was basically inside the house and I was just feeling blah so I didn't even do that much walking inside the house. I did do 7 loads of laundry. Can I count that as cross training?

Tuesday
Plan: 3.5 Miles, Actual: 3.5+ Miles
So I got up at my normal time and ran my normal route plus a bit. What I didn't notice until my watch synced later was that when it froze in the midst of alerting me to change intervals from run to walk and then finally unfroze (not sure that's a word) four minutes or so later, it cut off part of my route because it was confused for so long. I knew that when I finished my run, I seemed like I had gone farther than the last time I ran the same route for 3.5 miles but I didn't think too much of it until looking at my route on the Garmin app later. I think it probably cut off about .15 miles but I can't be sure. My watch clocked 3.5 so I'm counting that but I know I went a bit farther. This run felt okay except that the humidity was 99% so it was a bit like swimming rather than running at some point. It was pretty yucky out. It wasn't too hot though at about 74 degrees so that was nice(ish). I did my normal 1:1 intervals and felt good about it. A bandaid on my toe helped ensure no blister again. I am having some tightness, though I wouldn't call it pain, along one side of my left shin. Not sure what's up with that. I have had it once before and noticed that it was because I was sometimes running with one foot on the road (my right) and the other on the white concrete part next to the curb. It is not only a different material and feels different, but it is also slightly uneven. I think maybe it was related to that as I often moved to that side of the road when cars came by. It seemed like a lot of cars were out this morning for some reason. It should be gone by Thursday when I run again.

Wednesday:
Plan: Rest, Actual: Rest
I didn't do much this day. Honestly, I don't even remember it. =( It's less important though in the grand scheme of training so it's really relevant, I guess.

Thursday
Plan: 3.5 Miles, Actual: 6 Miles
This was probably my best run to date. It wasn't my fastest, but despite being the long run for the week, it wasn't difficult and I felt great doing it. The temp was down just a bit in the morning and while it was still humid, the lower temp made running more tolerable. I switched my weekend long run for this one because we had a planned 5k in the morning on Saturday and it was just easier. Other than the 4:30am wake up call to get this one done, it was just great. When I finished, I definitely felt like I could have gone another couple of miles at least. I did the first mile at 2:1 just to see how my time worked out. It was my fastest mile, but not by too much. Not enough to warrant me feeling like I needed to continue at that interval. I switched back to 1:1 after that and while my mile splits were slightly lower, it was comparable. I'm just faster when I get time to rest and walk.

Friday
Plan: Rest, Actual: Rest
Another day of rest and another day I don't remember because I don't write these posts immediately. Oh well.

Saturday
Plan: 6 Miles, Actual: 3.16 Miles (Halloween 5k)
This was the day we switched. We ran the Track Shack Halloween 5k. It was fun. It was around Lake Baldwin which is a new area for us. A lot of the course was tree lined so that was nice. Especially since the race didn't start until 8am and it was already sunny and getting warm at that point. I ended up doing 1:1 for the duration of the race. I ended up finishing with a 12:55 pace which is actually my fastest 1:1 interval pace for anything longer than 2 miles so I felt pretty good about that. It also gave me a lot more hope that I can run the half with my 1:1 (as long as I train well enough to maintain those intervals) and hopefully finish in around 3 hours.

Sunday
Plan: Rest, Actual: Rest
I was thisclose to getting my step goal this day... but ended up short by about 300 steps. And honestly, I didn't care a whole lot. I actually thought I was going to be a lot lower but we ended up walking a lot at the beach and I caught up quite a bit while we were there.

The upcoming week is our rest week. We only have two 3 mile runs. I'm looking forward to it because then it all ramps up week after week until we get a week out from the race. Then we knock the overall mileage down a bit. It also means we are around halfway there. This week we also officially hit over 50 miles for the training cycle. Pretty excited!!

Total Weekly Mileage: 12.66
Total Training Mileage: 53.51

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