Week 4: April 25 - May 1, Goal: 55km
Monday - Rest Day
Spaghetti squash with meat sauce, broccoli and guacamole and a cocktail. A little foam rolling of sore muscles from the weekend and off to bed early today.
Tuesday - 7 Steady
8km@214m elevation gain
8km fun run with the DFTC and the warm weather brought with it our biggest group yet. My legs felt great out there today.
Wednesday - 4x 500mHills
10.3km@225km elevation gain
10km run from home to the Rose Hill trails. A nice flat 3km to get there and then the fun started. Found myself a 500m climbing section of trail that started gradually and increased in grade towards the end. Four times up that curling single track, 2x into the setting suns rays until I reached the stick laid out on the path marking my finish line. After sucking wind at the top for the last time I made my way home along the flat 3kms of gas line trail, feeling surprisingly good.
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| Can't see the sweat pouring off me! |
Thursday - 5 Slow
5.4km@87m elevation gain
5.4km of awesome friends on trail in the sunshine with a double rainbow arching the valley below.
Friday - Rest Day
Saturday - 8km Steady
8.1km@97m elevation gain
Normally my long run for the week occurs here, but having just arrived in Spokane last night after a long drive and having a 12km road race tomorrow, I thought it prudent to bump my LSD to follow on Sunday afternoon. Instead this delightful 8km run through growing suburban neighbourhoods skirting the open hillsides and boarding all manner of retail got me out the door in the morning while the house awoke slowly. And I got a strong cup of coffee.
Bonus on the run was re-asserting my claim as QOM (Queen of the Mountain) for a Strava segment around the corner from Grandpas.
Race Day Tomorrow!!
Sunday - Goal: 27km (total)
Blooms day 12km@97m elevation gain, Road Race, Spokane, WA
What a gorgeous sunny day for a race! That aspect of the race was great. Finisher shirts were beautiful too, that's always a well guarded secret at Bloomsday. This year the shirts paid tribute to the race's 40 Year Anniversary and was printed on a lovely lilac coloured lightweight cotton blend shirt.
1:01:17 is my official race time for my third attempt on the course. Remarkably a smidgen faster than two years ago but not the race I was hoping for. I found the first 2kms a tremendous struggle to get up to speed in the tight packed crowd of the yellow corral. Valuable time was lost as was downhill wasted while still fighting for a line of sight to break free of the crowd. The disappointment from the startling carried on my shoulder throughout the race and I allowed that to weight me down. Definitely something I need to work on if I'm going to tackle 4x that distance and probably more rocks and roots than people.
Following the race, Brian and I dove into a couple beers and burgers, effectively sabotaging my previous intentions of completing the other 15km on the docket for the day. Oops.
So at the end of Week 4 I'm 11km short of my distance goal. Thinking that I was going to be able to pull off the race and my LSD run on the same weekend was a little unrealistic I suppose but there were some good workouts included in the kilometres actually logged.
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