12 weeks to go!

Hiya and happy Wednesday!  I took Monday off and now I'm all mixed up on my days - this week is going by fast as a result!  I will recap our fun weekend up north in a different post, but I wanted to throw down my plan for the week first.

I cant believe in 12 short weeks I will be getting ready to race.  These training weeks seem to go by faster and faster.  I'm not complaining, I just hope come May 18th that I'm ready to race, and now that this week is half over, I suppose I should get my plan up.

Monday - 1.5 mi. WU&CD
                 3 miles T (7:25-7:35), 2 miles T (7:25), 1 mile T (7:15 or as fast as I can go)
                 9 miles total

Tuesday - 5 miles easy
Wednesday - 1.5 mi. WU&CD
                      10x400m R pace (1:32-1:36), 400m recovery, 4 striders to start
                      8 miles total

Thursday - REST
Friday - 6 miles easy
Saturday - 12 miles easy (no faster than 8:30 pace)
Sunday - 5 miles easy

Week total = 45 miles

Monday was my tempo run.  I really wasnt sure how my legs would feel after the weekend.  Last Sat. I had my first 12 miler (avg. 8:23 pace), that was full of hills.  It was fun, but trashed my legs pretty good.  Sun. was 6 miles, and man it was tough.  My legs felt dead.  So I was nervous about Mondays run.  Nichole gave my the green light to either do an easy 5-6 miles or take the day off, but that afternoon I was feeling ok, so I decided to give it a go.  Surprisingly my legs felt good!  Its almost like they knew it was the beginning of a new week and that I needed them to be fresh.  For the 3 miles I started at 7:35 and sped up 5 sec. each mile to end at 7:25.  For the 2 miles I started at 7:25 and sped up 5 sec. each 3/4 miles to end at 7:15.  For  my last mile I started at the 7:15 but kept speeding up and finished that with an avg. pace of 6:50.  I was really happy with how this went.  I wasnt sure what to expect from my legs and I'm glad they pulled through.  The rest of the week is pretty easy with the exception of Wednesday - lets hope they are still good for that!

Tuesday was an easy 5 miles, nothing exciting to note here.  Jake ran with me and we kind of meandered through different neighborhoods and through downtown so that was fun.  I'm getting a little bored with my usual routes, so this was a nice change of scenery.

So far thats my week.  We'll see how tonights intervals go.  I havent done straight 400's in awhile so hopefully I can keep up!

Hope everyone is having a great week!  I keep telling myself Spring is right around the corner, its starting to warm up here (30 degrees!), so its nice not to completely freeze to death outside. Hope you all have been able to get outside and enjoy it too!

Although, I'm not sure if I'm ready for warm weather quite yet...