Monday afternoon saw another six mile mid-day lunch run. This one ended up being a tad slower than previous runs, which I was OK with because of the 20 miler on Saturday, and the TrainerRoad power test on Sunday night. Not a whole lot exciting or different to say about this run., except that I did it on Monday instead of Tuesday because I was flying out Monday afternoon/evening for work - and the remaining weekly schedule meant that my best bet to get the miles in that I wanted would be to run on Monday. I figured that if I ended up at a place where running wasn't going to be easy (ie, urban setting or not-so-great area) while travelling, I should probably take the safe option and run Monday before leaving, even though I'd normally rather have taken it as a rest day. Oh! The thing I did do, though, was wear the compression pants afterwards. Since this run was coming on the heels of 20 miles and a bike workout, I figured I mine as well do everything I could do maximize recovery. Not sure what effect it may have had.
Tuesday evening, though, I had to do at least something to make up for skipping Monday's yoga class. So, after I got back to the hotel, I cranked the heat as high as it would go (which was only 85F), let the shower run for a while to get the humidity up, filled the tub with hot water and soaked in it for about 10 minutes to artificially warm the muscles, and then did my own Bikram Yoga routine in the hotel room. It was nowhere near as good a workout as I get in a heated studio, but it was better than nothing.
Today (Wednesday) after work, I was able to get another six miler in. This one was wierd. First - the entire first half was all gentle downhill, so my pace was relatively quick for my HR. Usually I see in the 8:30-9 min/miles for the high 140's - this was a good 45 seconds faster than that. My concern was that on the way back, my HR would be relatively high unless I slowed down. To my surprise, I didn't have to slow down all that much to keep my HR in check. I suspect that not having done any bike workouts, which I've been doing a lot in the past couple weeks in addition to running, meant I wasn't as fatigued.
To be honest, though - I really needed this as a rest week. I've gone from averaging ~2 hrs/wk from mid-October through mid-December, and ramped up from 5 hrs/wk to 10 hrs/wk from the beginning of the year through last week. I was originally going to take last week as a rest week, but my work travel plans changed, making this week (and actually next week) instead. It actually sets up nicely for a taper leading into the Hampton half on the 19th. For a while I wasn't sure how I was going to approach that race - whether to treat it as a training run or try to PR. Since I seem to have a taper built in to my schedule, I'm thinking I'll try to PR it - especially since I will be avoiding a long run this weekend due to having done 17 miles the other week followed by 20 this past weekend. Need to lay off the long runs for a couple weeks - but I may see what kind of pace I can maintain with a threshold run this weekend. That could give me a decent idea as to whether a PR is in the cards or not.
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