Reflections

So the end of last week didn’t exactly go as planned. Fast food was eaten Friday for lunch. And no trails were run after work.

I did also find out that I won’t be finding out until this week! I’m really hopeful that all this delay is more of an onboarding delay vs a delay in declining me, b/c I would hope that they would’ve declined me already!

So another rollercoaster week to try and get through.

All I can do is try and get through.

And with planning, instead I’ve been focusing on setting goals for myself to plan for.

My triathlon is coming up – only 10 weeks to go! I’m not really following a training plan for it per se. Instead I just have some guidelines that I’m looking to follow. Each week this is my goal:

1-2 swims per week (1 endurance, 1 speed, or 1 hour long workout each week with an endurance main set, then a speed main set)
2 runs (1 hill or speed, 1 “long”)
2 bike (1 short with a transition run tagged on, 1 long)

Every 3 weeks I’m going to do a brick workout. Trying to get as close to 20km bike, 5km run each time.
I know the course and I know I need practice biking on rolling hills and running on hills. Since the entire first 10k is pretty much uphill, I know that I need at least 2-3 rides on similar country roads. It will be hard to fit in though with this summer being crazy busy!

And since I can’t plan anything else – I’m already thinking of a fall goal! I’ve done some reflecting on my 2 half marathons. The first one I trained for (the Toronto Half in Oct 2006) I actually quite enjoyed. Training wasn’t where it should’ve been, I had planned on 3-4 runs a week but in the end only got in about 2 (my short runs and my long runs). It was the summer leading up to our wedding plus training didn’t happen on our honeymoon at all. But I was still able to meet my goal of beating 2hrs:30min with a chip time of 2:28:27. Just as a note I ran all my long runs at an 8 and 2 interval (run 8, walk 2) and my longest run was 20km. My second one I trained more consistently with 2-3 runs per week plus basketball. I didn’t have any major plans that summer so that definitely helped. But I hated training. I was running 10 and 1s and my longest run was supposed to me 12miles but only ended up being 10 miles (and a couple of those). I also had a week of vacation in there where I only ran a couple of time. Plus I rolled my ankle a few times while playing basketball which sidelined me too.

I did not meet my goal of a PR and my A goal of 2:15. In fact I did worse. 2:34. And my legs were really sore the entire race. I only switched to 10 and 1s to get faster and b/c in my mind there was a smaller stigma with 1 min walking vs 2 min walking. Funny how I ended up running the race slower and hated long runs after that. Ever since that half marathon the longest I’ve run is 10km and I certainly haven’t done too many of those!

So I’m thinking of doing a half marathon in November – the Hamilton Road2Hope. But I can be fickle. I don’t know if I’m planning this b/c I really want to do it or if I’m planning it for lack of nothing else to plan! Come August and I’ll know better. But what this reflection has shown me is that I want to run one more at least, doing the 8 and 2s to see if that it was the 10 and 1’s. So there will definitely be another half marathon in my future!