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13 Weeks to 13 Miles! OUC Orlando Half Marathon Training: Week 9

Bring on the 18 mile week!!! This is going to be an interesting one since one run I'm doing outside my normal neighborhood (more on that on day 2 of this week's plan).

Full disclosure to myself when I read this back one day... I'm writing this a full week removed from the first run of this week so I have no idea what was going on most of the time when I was running a week before. =(

Tuesday
Plan: 4.5 Miles, Actual: 4.5 Miles
This is the first week of short runs being 4.5 miles and I was ready for it. I ran these at about my normal pace averaging 13:49 pace. Overall I was slightly slower, but it was fairly warm this morning and I wasn't feeling it. I think this was a run that I woke up not in the mood to do anything but I did it anyway so I could keep on schedule. Also, I knew that with this week, we were officially just over a month away from race day so I was excited and feeling sort of ready to get the show on the road and finish. Other than the heat, I remember it being fairly typical. Nothing really felt off other than some more of that random pain I sometimes have on the side of my left shin. It wasn't anything I couldn't run through.

Thursday
Plan: 4.5 Miles, Actual: 4.5 Miles
This was my one run done outside our neighborhood in training. I was at a conference at the end of the week and stayed with my bro and sis-in-law in Green Cove Springs. The night before we took a drive to make sure we could figure out a mile or so loop that was easy enough that I didn't get lost in their neighborhood. I'm glad we did because I am terrible at directions and get turned around easily. It was just over a mile loop (if I added in a tiny culdesac that I noticed when we drove around). I had to make 4 loops and then went down another road just a bit before turning around to get the last few tenths. One big thing I noticed about their neighborhood versus ours is that people leave their houses EARLY. We think maybe it is because a lot of people work in Jacksonville so they have to get on the road fairly early to get to work on time. There was a ton of traffic. Especially when I think about the fact that at the same time in our neighborhood, I may see three cars total. They also  have a ton of random cats hanging around. I noticed that as well. And a lot of people out and about walking dogs, running, or walking. It was an easy loop and ended up being my fastest 4.5 mile run so far. I finished in 59:46 with a 13:16 per mile pace. One of my miles was under 13 minutes. Barely... but under. Hence why it was faster overall. There was extremely minimal elevation change so that made the run a lot easier than normal. Not that my normal route is bad, but there is some change. This run was almost flat the entire way.

Saturday
Plan: 9 Miles, Actual: 9 Miles
New day, new record. Longest run to date EVER. I was pretty proud of myself. So, I was initially supposed to do this run on Sunday BUT because Steven was home watching the kiddos while I was gone and his parents were helping out, he was able to run his long run on Friday morning leaving me to run Saturday and I'm so glad he did. I was able to get it done and didn't have to worry about the fact that on Sunday I would have needed to get up around 4 to get it done and get to church on time. This let me get up a bit later. The only real downfall... the rain. It rained all night on Friday night into Saturday morning and when I left at 5:30 or so, it was raining still. I actually waited about 10 minutes to see if it would clear out and then decided I no longer cared and wanted to just go. So I did. It was minimal rain most of the run but I did notice that I had Miles 2 and 3 at just over 14 minute miles. If I remember correctly, that is when the rain picked up some and I slowed a bit because I didn't want to slip and fall. We have come all this way and I wasn't risking hurting myself less than a month before the race because I wasn't being careful in the rain. Otherwise, the run was great. I felt really good about it. I kept to my 1:1 intervals. I know I said initially my goal was to increase them, but I'm really happy with them and totally good with my time, so I am obviously keeping them. I paced the entire run at an overall 13:37 minutes per mile. I burned a whopping 1200 calories according to my watch... which is obviously not 100% accurate but I felt it later when I wanted to eat everything in sight. I'm pretty proud to say that I have run 9 miles. I never thought that was going to be possible and yet, here we are. I'm also extremely excited that we technically only have two more long runs in the training plan before we run the actual race.

Total Weekly Miles: 18 Miles
Total Training Miles: 108.9 Miles (I officially went over 100 miles training!!!!!)

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