Breakdown: Week 6 1/2 marathon training

Another week in training down!

Monday: Rest day... my favorite way to spend a Monday. After the 10k, I felt like I deserved it.

Tuesday: I ended up doing a 3 mile pace run as a warm up before my upper body weight session. I'm not really sure how that happened, but I knew I needed to get in 3 miles & just wanted to get it over with. So I set the treadmill for super fast & smoked it out: 3 miles @ 10:01 pace.

Wednesday: Another 4 miles. And it almost didn't happen. I didn't get it in before work & I was dragging by the end of the day. When I walked in the door after work, I immediately started stripping off my clothes. I was desperate to make sure I got on the treadmill to log my miles. And ended up with 4 miles @ 10:17 pace. I kept getting faster & faster, though I didn't intend to do so.

Thursday: Otherwise known as How My Week Got Off Track. I was moving a bit slowly on Thursday & decided to move my run to Friday. So when I started my lower body weight session, my muscles were a bit on the cold side. Add to that a new type of lunge & what do you get? A left leg hamstring cramp, apparently. After the lunges, I doubled over & grabbed... well, it looked like I was grabbing my butt. But I was really grabbing my left hammy. Trainer & I immediately headed over to the foam rolling station to try & work it out.

Friday: No big surprise here. Left hammy was still not okay. So there was no running, just relaxing. In the evening, I headed out for some shopping & a sushi dinner. Yes, I dine alone & have no problem with that.

Saturday: I decided to take one extra rest day to be on the safe side. I spent a lot of the day sleeping. No, it's not exciting. But I wanted to be careful about my leg.

Sunday: The Long Run. I got a very late start, roughly around noon. It was H-O-T out, so I don't think I'll be making that mistake again. But it was necessary because Mr. X arrived that morning (after being gone for over 3 weeks for work-related stuff). After catching up on the last few episodes of "The Walking Dead," he headed out on his motorcycle & I for my run. I wanted to keep my average pace at 11:00, which meant keeping my running pace at approx. 10:40. I also changed to a 15/1 Run/Walk strategy. Some big adjustments for me! And I was pretty successful as far as I'm concerned: 8 miles @ 11:07 average pace. Since that includes my walk breaks, that means I was keeping the tempo pretty high.

So what does one do to celebrate an awesome run? Go to the mall for some light browsing. We'd never been in this store before, so we didn't know what to expect. Then we saw these "gorgeous" items:

Anyone need an Elvis Cow Table?



Found: World's Oldest Treadmill



After browsing in the strangest (& creepiest) store I've ever been in, we went to dinner. And yes, I totally indulged. Sadly, I didn't take a picture of my dessert: fried dough with nutella as a dipping sauce. Just typing this makes my mouth water.

Pizza Proscuitto Crudo e Mozzarella di Bufalo. And fries.

Fizzy water in a pretty bottle. Mr. X's beer.

There you have it. Another week in training for the record books. Not really, though. My weekly mileage was reduced thanks to my stupid hamstring, but I'm still satisfied with the week. And since it's a new week, I get to wash off my indulgent meal & be on track with my meal plan. Looking forward!