Fifteens Abound

This week has gone by way too fast, and I'm not referring to my pace. I've so far managed five runs and it seems that a theme is emerging.

Last Summer I ran quite a few mid-week training runs down the the Beaches and out along the boardwalk. I haven't done it since weeks before last September's marathon until Wednesday.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

First, on Tuesday I decided once more to commute on foot and ran 6.5km to the office and 8.8km to the boys' school after work for a total of 15.3km on the day. Nothing worth noting about these runs other than I ate much too close to my second run and contended with stomach pains and a side stitch the entire way. I also had to run a bit faster than I probably should have since I had to get to my younger one's drama recital. Happy to report that there was no drama either with my run or the recital...

Wednesday morning I woke up at 5:15am and had a surprisingly easy time getting myself out of bed for my run. Perhaps it was the novelty of what once was a familiar route that had be interested. Who knows. In any case, I got out there and ran a decent 15km out to the end of the Boardwalk and back. The hill on Jones Avenue proved tough, but doable. I have decided to actively seek out more hills from now on rather than avoid them for the sake of a better average pace. This was one of those times.

Thursday was an off day running wise, but I still got a little bit of training in anyway. I did leg weights during the day and then took the boys to the track again. I ran three laps with the younger one for 1.2km, then did some 100m sprints with 300m recovery jogs with the older one. The total for the day was 3km and it was fun to vary the pace a bit, not care about what the Garmin said, and just hang out with my sons while running.

This morning (Friday) I had a really tough time getting motivated to run. The alarm went off at 5:15am once more, but after a poor night of sleep I was really only interested in staying in bed. Had it been raining I probably would have, but somehow I managed to get out there for the same run as on Wednesday. This time the wind was really blowing hard out of the East and on the way out along the boardwalk it was really tough going. Conversely, the return route proved so easy as the wind carried me along. The run up the hill on Jones was tough as usual, but even with the wind in my face (I guess it was blowing out of the Northeast) I managed to make it up quite a bit faster than on Wednesday. This time I ran the 15km in 1:17:14 (average pace of 5:08/km) verses 1:19:53 on Wednesday (average pace of 5:19/km).

Ultimately, I think these fifteen kilometre runs, when done all at once, are better for me than doing the same distance in one day, but splitting it up into two training runs while commuting to work. I think I will still run to work now and then because it is fun to do so, but perhaps not more than once per week. Should I lack the motivation to get out of bed in the morning I guess it's a good second option to have the commute pretty much add up to the same distance over two runs, but I hope to not have to use this backup too often.

The weekend looks very wet for Toronto and I hope that the forecast is wrong as I would prefer a couple more nice dry runs to finish off the week. Next week I'm considering backing off a bit before the Sporting Life 10k, but not too much as I am running this race for training and fun and not for speed. I'll likely not back off at all on my mid-week distance. The goal race for my Spring is the Toronto Half Marathon coming up two weeks after the 10k and I will definitely force myself to give the legs a break leading up to that one.