Week in review Jan. 14-20: Run, bike, try to stay warm

This week was all about doing what I could.

Last week was rough and I don’t really have concrete reasons for why. Work has been stressful, temperatures dropped to below zero F, and we had my parents’ dog for a few days. Nothing was a big problem on its own but it was a kind of “death by a thousand cuts” situation.

As a result, training wasn’t spectacular. I was happy to get one thing done most days. To counteract some of the gloom and stress, I really made an effort to get to bed earlier than usual, and I can’t do that if I’m doing my PT until 9 p.m. Plus, lousy weather for evening commutes and errands on a couple days meant I didn’t start my home workouts until 6:30 p.m. at the earliest. It wasn’t a good situation for getting a lot done in the evenings. Wednesday I just gave up and did laundry and some computer work instead of any workouts at all.

But, considering all that, it still wasn’t terrible. I managed three trainer rides and three treadmill runs, and one round of PT. I SHOULD have done a million other things but last week was one of those weeks where I am happy that I got anything done at all.

It worked out to be:

Run: Three times, all on the treadmill, for 21 miles in about 3:50. This was my first 20+ mile week since my injury in November 2017! On Friday, I went to the gym to use their nicer treadmills for a speed run. I started tentatively since I slipped on the ice earlier that day and tweaked my IT band, but the run ended up being half a mile at 6.0, half a mile at 6.2, etc. all the way until 7.4 (8:06 minute per mile pace) when I couldn’t hold on any longer due to a worsening side stitch, and ending with a mile easy. Not bad at all! I also ended my Sunday “long” run of 8 miles with a fast finish of goal half marathon pace, 9:05, for the last two miles.

Bike: Three times, all on the trainer, for 46.75 fake trainer “miles” in about 3:38. Nothing spectacular here, just two short and one longer Trainer Road rides. I need to re-test my FTP soon and I’m not looking forward to the suffering, but Saturday’s longer ride felt way too easy and I can’t have that.

PT: Just one session of about 45 minutes between my run and food prepping Sunday. I just had to make a judgement call about priorities this week and sleep and sanity won out.

Total: 7 sessions in about 8:13, which isn’t terrible! It’s one rest day yet still an average of one session per day and more than an hour per day, my baseline for a good week.

We’ve got at least a couple more weeks of arctic cold to look forward to, but we should be getting a little more daylight in the evenings to help mitigate that. I don’t do “feels like -10” but hopefully I can sneak out to run outside on the next 25-degree day. It’ll feel like a tropical vacation! I’m going to try to enjoy anything that makes this winter a bit more bearable. We still have a long way to go.