Running Recovery Weeks

Hello there! 

This post is brought to you from the glory of being in the office on a Saturday. 

As most know my company is closing down and I am the Project Coordinator for the decommission which means fun things like closing down facilities and being a master of logistics! 

I should note that I put this work day on myself since I managed this process. I planned on taking Friday off to not totally lose the full weekend but work had other plans and I couldn't. 

Anyways back to the post.

So my spring race season has come to a close and I must say it was pretty successful!

I ran 3, count them 3 half marathons! My spring goal was to get sub 2 and see where I was at for setting a PR this year and happy to say, mission accomplished at the first one! 

Overall I ran: 1:58:13, 2:04:13 and 2:00:32 which I am happy with. 

I also mixed in a 10K the week after my sub 2 half and to my surprise, I PR'd! 

Then I was also signed up for an NYRR 4 miler. My sole purpose was that my NYRR pace was 10+ per mile which is clearly not my race pace. It is based off my 4:59 NYCM I ran in 2014 with my Crohn's flare + stress fracture. Needless to say, not a reflection of my current state! 

To my surprise I PR'd that as well! 

This all leads me to the past couple of weeks. 

After some serious racing and training, I was done. I had neglected cross training and weight training for a while during the race season and needed to back off the running and reset. 

I have had a glorious couple weeks of backing down the mileage.  I think I ran 10 miles last week and this week am over that but still below my 30+ I usually hit. 

Not only does it feel good to tone down the running but it has given me the opportunity to dig in to a lot of other workouts. 

I recently bought the weights for Les Mills Body Pump and have invested in their on demand all I can say is I am loving it so far! And that my body is sore in all new ways. 

I will post more on that soon but I am enjoying home workouts more than I thought I would. 

While I may run some shorter races over the summer months I am not focusing on another race until the fall. I have yet to determine what will be my goal half but safe to say I will be giving my PR (1:53:14) a run in a few months time! 

For now, it is all about focusing on building strength, especially core which I am being more diligent about and just sustaining my base of running fitness. I will probably still run a few times a week and keep a longer run on the weekend since that is the norm for me but I don't plan on a structured schedule (although to be honest when I trained for spring season it was a very "loose" schedule but it worked - see PR's and hitting goals ;) 

It really is good though to step back from running a lot (I haven't had a significant down week in over a year!) and focus on some other forms of workout. This will all make me a stronger runner down the line!

Now off to hopefully finish up overseeing this move out and enjoying SOME of Saturday! 

Happy weekend!