Goodlife Victoria Half Marathon - Week 7 Recap

I give!  I give!  Uncle!  My heart can't take it anymore.  OK, seriously...Canada has not had it's share of luck these Olympics.  I know...it's about who is the best on any given day and shi!t happens, but wow.  This isn't to discount any of the medals that we have won...men and women's silvers in rowing eights, Rosie's gold, Ryan's silver, bronze for the women's soccer...it's all fantastic.  But it was so sad to see Paula Findlay apologizing to Canada coming in last, Simon Whitfield wiping out in transition and looking crestfallen, and now the men's 4x100m were disqualified after initially getting a bronze...that visual of one of the men crying into the Canadian flag and seeing Jared Connaughton apologizing and accepting responsibility for the DQ absolutely just broke my heart.  Anyways, tomorrow is another day and here's hoping that the Canadian men kick some serious ass in the marathon tomorrow!

Moving away from the kleenex box now...

Sunday:  20 mins Spartacus, 20 mins HIIT stationery bike

Monday: rest
Hubs and I had decided that this was going to be a total rest day...sleeping in, no working out...and that's exactly what we did.

Tuesday: 30 mins stationery bike
Well...truth be told I felt a little guilty about not working out on Monday, so I snuck in a workout on Tuesday.  We seem to be having lots of thunder and lightning storms lately, and that night there were some huge cracks of thunder that actually made me scream...for once we were happy to head down to the basement to workout.  Ha!

Wednesday: 20 mins Spartacus, 20 mins HIIT stationery bike in a.m./run clinic in p.m.
Super loving the Spartacus, so another session Wednesday morning.  Evening clinic was, of course, more hills.  We went out to a local trail that was made up of five steep hills...we had to run from the bottom to the top and then come back down and do repeats of the first hill and then back down, up to the second hill and back down, etc., etc.  After the first time up, I seriously considered turning around and heading home...the uphill was hard, but the downhill was way, way worse.  The trail was dry and some parts were gravelly, and it was so steep that at points I couldn't control myself coming down and had to stop myself on trees.  I was not loving it, but I told myself to suck it up, not wimp out and somehow I manage to finish unscathed.  Another guy in our clinic wasn't so lucky though...just as I was coming back up on one section, I saw a huge commotion ahead of me...one of the guys went ass over teakettle on the way down, smashed his face on the rocks and was bleeding.  I'm kinda hoping that we stop the trail  runs and just stay on asphalt!

Thursday: rest

Friday: rest
Yeah, yeah...I was supposed to work out but I didn't and blew it off.  D is back from vaycay next week so I'll be back at bootcamp for sure.

Saturday: 16K run
Hubs had something he had to do Saturday morning downtown, so we got up bright and early and did our run downtown.  We were running by 6:30a.m., and it was nice and cool which was great...it turned out to be a pretty warm day so glad that we got it done early.  Overall I had a great run...I felt like I had lots of energy, even though my legs have been feeling a bit stiff and tired recently.  I think taking  a few days of rest off after that tough hill session helped to give me some extra juice.  I was able to maintain a 5:30/km pace for the first 10K, and then slowed it down so Hubs and I could run the rest of the route together as we were playing it by ear until we reached the full 16K.  Poor Hubs, he was so tired after but he had to meet up with some people so I hung around downtown and engaged in some retail therapy a la lululemon.  Ha!

The other thing that I've noticed is that at our last Mindful Strides clinic, Marilyn really talked a lot about the position of our necks...keeping it tall and long is the goal, and by doing that it's hard to have the wrong body positioning.  When I get tired, my shoulders tend to come up and my head falls back, and because I'm carrying so much tension in my neck I've been getting awful headaches after I run.  The last few weeks I've been working on my neck position and voila...no more headaches!  Did I say that I love this woman?!

PS.  Sinclair for flagbearer!