Goodlife Victoria Half Marathon - Week 12 Recap

Boo...not feeling great today, so after much agonizing I decided to skip my speed session tonight.  Sob.  I was feeling crappy on and off today and just when I thought that I was feeling better, I'd get a wave of crappiness.  Going to make it up this week though...I know it's just one session but I'm on a roll and I'm kinda addicted to the speedwork now, as much as I hate it.  Hee.

Sunday - rest

Monday - rest

Tuesday - rest
Does walking all over Vancouver count?  While Hubs was at work, I wandered around all the streets in downtown Vancouver.  I found a fantastic cookbook at Cookworks that I'm totally stoked about...called Powerfoods, by the peeps at Whole Living magazine.  Sorry folks...I've been trying to upload a pic of the cover but for some reason can't.  I curse you, Blogger!  Anyways, I made a bunch of recipes from this cookbook for this week and they're all delish and healthy - a quinoa/pumpkin seed salad, fattoush salad, a whole wheat pasta with herb/almond pesto, a kale slaw (I did tweak this one a bit though) and marinated beets.  I really wanted to get a lot of veggies in this week as last week was a bit of a black hole for food.

Wednesday - bootcamp a.m./clinic p.m.
I was kinda worried as I hadn't worked out in a few days and had *ahem* eaten a lot of delicious restaurant food, but I think the rest and extra food helped.  At least that's the story and I'm gonna stick with it.  Jason had us run the big hill at Esquimalt Lagoon, and I actually felt pretty good for the most part.  For the clinic, we went back up to the track at the university and did a pyramid workout...intervals of 200m, 400m, 600m, 800m and back down to 200m with 100m recovery intervals in between, 85 - 95% effort, absolutely no stopping or walking.  I made a huge mistake...I felt a bit hungry at 5pm, so ate half a bar and drank some water...should known better, as immediately upon starting the intervals I had stitches on both sides.  It was pretty much a struggle from beginning to end, and I started to lose track of where I was at...at one point Jason asked how far I had to go and I yelled out that I had no effing idea!  Thank goodness we were pretty much at the end so he said do one last 200m sprint and I was done.  Overall pace was 5:05/km - slower than my last session, but still happy with it considering how I was feeling.

Thursday - Mindful Strides clinic
There was a bit of a mixup with time this week so luckily Hubs and I had some alone time with Marilyn so it was almost like a private session!  We were able to ask her a lot of questions and she was asking how we were doing with our running overall.  I mentioned that I was doing a lot of speedwork and one thing that I'm finding I'm doing because I'm pushing so hard and am so tired, that quite often I lose my form and just end up muscling my way to the finish.  A lot of it is probably my fitness level and I'm still working on my pacing, but I asked her what she did when she gets tired.  The one thing that she said that worked for her was to really concentrate on how her feet strike...really trying to keep the strides light.  Gonna try that at this week's speed session.  Marilyn also had her physio at the session too to help give some guidance, and he complimented Hubs and I on our drills and said we must practice a lot!  All those long hours of practicing our form on our runs is finally paying off.

Friday - bootcamp

Saturday - 20K run
Again...all that food we ate in Van must have helped as we both had a pretty good run...legs felt fresh and we were out by around 7:30am so it was nice and cool.  Didn't feel so fresh afterwards though...we went out for a quick errand and pretty much spent the better part of the afternoon dozing on the couch.