Milwaukee Marathon Half Marathon Training: Week 1 Recap

I'm back on a training plan.  Half-marathon training started last week and it was a tough week.  I was not/am not mentally prepared to start a grueling training plan yet.  I may have mentioned this before, but when I signed up for the 10/15/17 half marathon, it seemed so far away.  It still does.  After the marathon, I was so excited to kick ass at the half marathon.  The Hanson's book mentions that working on your half marathon is a good way to lower your marathon time.  My experience thus far has shown that to be true - I PRed in the half marathon last fall...then PRed in the marathon in spring.
I wanted to try doing the Hanson's Advanced half-marathon training program, which is 18 weeks in length and thus, needed to start last week.  It is a strange thing doing a training program for the second time.  I made the mistake of looking at all the workouts and freaked out.  The speed workouts are the exact same as the marathon speed workouts.  Now, I LOVED the speed workouts, but felt like, "Oh man! Don't I get a break on these - I'm only training for half the distance!".  Then I looked at the long runs and there are several long runs that are over 13 miles.  WTF.  Finally, while the Hanson's beginner marathon plan featured 6 weeks of EASY running (therefore, only 12 of the 19 weeks were "hard"), this advanced half-marathon plan only gives you one week of easy running, and I have now done it.  Time to shift into high gear.  This is what it means to be "advanced" I guess.  All in all - these thoughts are not helping me, I know.

Last week was the lone "easy" week in the plan and it felt hard.  There were several things that I didn't do.  While I had gotten better at running slower paces on easy runs during marathon training, I seemed to have forgotten that.  Many of my runs last week were me pushing myself to beat the clock and telling myself that I wasn't in shape if I couldn't hit that for an easy run.  NOT HELPFUL.  I pulled my head out of my ass for yesterday's run and it was enjoyable.  It is hell running in heat and humidity.  This I know.  However, this knowledge wasn't enough to pull me out of bed most mornings.  I am having a really hard time getting to bed before 10 pm lately!  During marathon training, I was a machine.  Clock strikes 9 PM, I'm in bed.

Just typing this I realized how much I am comparing this half marathon training to my recent marathon training experience.  Comparison is the thief of joy, or something like that, right?  I have to stop.

While I work on that, here is my recap of last week:

Monday, June 12
Off

I slept through my alarm.  There was no time to make up for the missed miles later in the day because my daughter had her cast removed, my son had an ENT appointment and I had a meeting a church in addition to work.  Bleck.

Tuesday, Jun 13
Some late afternoon miles:

4 miles, 32:13 (8:00 avg pace)

Wednesday, June 14
First official day on the plan.  I again moved the plan back a day so that I could do long runs on Saturdays instead of Sundays.

Plan says: 4 miles easy

What I do: 4.65 miles, 36:44 (7:54 avg pace)

Thursday, June 15
Plan says: 4 miles easy

4 miles, 29:59 (7:29 avg pace)

Friday, June 16
Plan says: 4 miles easy

What I do: 4.1 miles 32:26 (7:54 avg pace)

Saturday, June 17
Plan says: 6 miles easy

What I do: HOLY HOTNESS.  I avoided running early morning and instead went out mid-afternoon.  It was a shit storm.  I was relentless in trying to keep this at a 7:30 pace, regardless of the heat, humidity and how I was feeling.  That was dumb.  Then I had a sunscreen fail which turned into a contacts issue which lead to a detour to a Dairy Queen bathroom to fix my eye.

6.0 miles, 44:57 (7:29 avg pace)

Sunday, June 18
Plan says: 4 miles easy

What I do: It was Father's Day so I was up early not to run but to make my husband's favorite breakfast.  I ended up running after the kids were in bed and it was much cooler outside so it was fine.

4 miles, 32:30 (8.07 avg pace)

Plan Miles: 22
Total Weekly Miles:  26 miles

Sleep Data
Sense told me today that during the last 10 nights, I moved 43% less than the average person using Sense.  About 6% of my sleep consists of agitated sleep.  This is interesting because last week I had more agitated sleep than I typically do - I spent a few nights tossing and turning between the hours of 1 and 3 pm.  Thus, the percentage of my "deep" sleep is lower than what it typically is, but apparently I am still getting better sleep than the average Sense user.  One could argue that people with sleep issues are more likely to invest in a system like Sense.

My take on this is that I personally feel like I need a lot of quality sleep to feel good, no matter what other people need.  In other words, it is not useful to me to compare myself to others (hmmm....I can reach this insight here but not always with running...hmmmm....) Yes, I get a lot of deep sleep and yes, I am hovering around the 7.5 hour range.  But I still feel tired.  I think the "magic" of a system like this is that it tracks things for you and allows you to see patterns. (Laura Vanderkam would be so proud of me right now.) I do not feel "tired" on days when I am closer to 8 hours of sleep, the majority of that being deep.  Lucky for me, if I go to bed early, I can usually make this happen.

Average sleep score: 79 (out of 100)
Average sleep duration: 7.5 hours (7.4 hours weekday, 7.7 hours weekend)

Sleep quality: 4% light, 52% medium, 44% deep