Happy Birthday, Nancy and a PR?

4

January 28, 2014 by Amy B

Last week I rode 109 miles on my bike and ran a whopping 4.5 miles (due to the shit-tastic weather we’ve been having).

On one hand: It’s driving me nuts not being able to run much. Yeah, we’ve got the awesome indoor track at work, but the workday doesn’t always allow me time to get up there to use it. No treadmill at home, so I’ve been doing what I consider the next best thing and just riding and riding and riding.

At the very least, I’m burning some calories, right?

Last night’s workout interrupted by screaming baby. This is a great way to catch up on missed television, BTW.

I’ve been trying to get in some interval work a few times a week but am mainly concentrating on steady, extended efforts. Whether this will help prepare me for this fucking crazy 100 mile bike race in May, I have no idea. I turned in my entry form today, so there’s no turning back now.

Imperial 100 = 100 miles. Dear God.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t completely terrified of this challenge. This seems more daunting than an ultramarathon.

So, running. I needed to get up to the track and put some time in today, if not for my sanity, but for Nancy’s birthday miles!

The kids wanted to make cupcakes yesterday, and what better way to get them out of my house? We’d done sugar cookie letters a few days earlier, so there you go. Homemade chocolate buttercream, FTW.

Unfortunately, since every school in the Upper Peninsula is closed today (due to freezeyerassoff temperatures), the SDC has become the “drop your kids off and leave them unsupervised while you go to work/go shop/do yoga/drink wine/whatever” for parents, making the multi-purpose room kind of crazy.

I had devised a sort of progressive run workout that I completely forgot about as soon as I started running. After running almost a lap (after the foot pod decided to catch up), I reset and settled into a decent but sustainable pace for a mile. I wasn’t sure what it was going to be, but a glance told me I was somewhere near 8:30. Why not see how long I can hang on? I thought.

After a mile I decided to go for a 5K. Splits:

8:18/8:15/8:04/0:49 sec for the final 0.1mi =

25:26

Whuuut.

Me, absolutely baffled at this pace. New Oiselle Flyte SS is awesome, kids. Also forgot shorts so thank god I had a pair of capris thrown in the bottom of the bag.

I hung on so that I could log 4.0 miles for the day.

And yet another Garmin shot because I really don’t believe I ran this fast.

My foot pod is calibrated and I’ve used it every time I’ve run in this building on this track. I’m thinking, is this even possible for me to run this fast? My gut says no, but when I look at HR data, I was working my ass off, even though it didn’t feel quite like I was going to die. Close, but not quite. Is the biking helping my running? Was I just really well-rested from a week off of running?

I don’t know. I think I’m going to put my skepticism away today and just ride the wave of PR happiness.