Milwaukee Marathon Half Marathon Training: Week 12 Recap

Sigh.  Last week started off really well.  I was getting workouts done and feeling ok.

Monday, August 28
Plan says: Easy 5 miles

What I do:  You may recall that I was coming off of family sick-fest last weekend so I didn't set a morning alarm.  I also reworked my workouts a little bit so that I wasn't coming off sick-fest and doing speed. My daughter started school that morning so I was going to try to squeeze in a run between work and when she got off the bus.   Due to school restructuring, she was going to be on the bus 10 extra minutes this year and I was going to use them!  I ended up logging 4.4 miles.  I still felt tired.

4.4 miles, 36:12 (8:09 average).

Tuesday, August 29
Plan says: Rest

What I do:  Yes! I had FINALLY gotten back to having Tuesday as a rest day.

Wednesday, August 30
Plan says: 1.5 mile warm up, 4 x 1.5 miles (0.5 miles jog in-between), 1.5 miles cool down

What I do:  I woke up early, did this workout and slayed.  Honestly, my goals for this were (1) to be around 6:30 pace; and (2) to ease into the workout.  I accomplished both.

1.51 mile warm up, 12:45 (8:27 avg pace)

1.5 miles, 10:01 (6:40 pace) / 0.5 miles, 4:25.7 (8:50 pace)
1.5 miles, 9:46.3 (6:30 pace) / 0.5 miles, 4:21.4 (8:43 pace)
1.5 miles, 9:50.3 (6:33 pace) / 0.5 miles, 4:23.1 (8:48 pace)
1.5 miles, 9:48.2 (6:32 pace)

1.1 mile cool down, 8:50 (8:02 avg pace)

Thursday, August 31
Plan says: 6 miles easy

What I do:  6.2 miles easy.  Two days in a row with the morning alarm!

6.2 miles, 51:19 (8:17 avg pace)

Friday, September 1
Plan says: 1.5 mile warm up, 6 miles at half-marathon pace (6:44), 1.5 mile cool down

What I do:  So tempo run.  I haven't had a good tempo run in weeks.  I decided that I was going to start over with these and work myself up physically and mentally rather than beat myself up over them.  My goal was to do a 4 mile tempo, easing into it and negative splitting.  It was still slower than what I wanted, but the progression of my miles was good.

1.5 mile warm up 12:53 (8:36)
4 miles, 27:33 (6:53 avg, mile splits = 7:03, 6:59, 6:45, 6:44)
1.5 mile cool down 11:44 (7:49)

AND NOW IT'S TIME FOR THE PLOT TWIST! (As I alluded to in my Instagram post this morning, I stole that from Devon Yanko's Leadville 100 race recap. It's a good one.)

I woke up Saturday morning at 1 AM with a throbbing, vice grip headache that was out of control.  What the hell was going on?!?!  I thought I was going to puke so I crawled (yes, crawled) into our bathroom.  No puke but man I could not shake the jolts of pain going through my head.  I thankfully fell asleep and then proceeded to rot in bed, in and out of sleep, for the remainder of the day, clutching my head.  My husband thought I was on the verge of death.  "I've never seen you like that!".  (He wins some award because he did all of the cooking for my daughter's birthday party AND yard work AND house cleaning AND wrangled our monkeys that day.)

He was Googling symptoms and diagnosed me with a migraine.  I was chugging ibuprofen and it was doing absolutely nothing so he went and got me some Excedrin migraine.  That at least took some of the edge off but I was not able to be upright at all.  

I felt better on Sunday - "better" meaning I was able to get up, shower, and stay upright while Maggie's party was going on.  I wasn't feeling hungry (I hadn't eaten anything since Friday night outside of a small bowl of oatmeal) and still had a headache.

Yesterday I felt a bit better as well.  I still had a headache, but no zingers.  I didn't feel as though I was on the edge of vomiting.  I ate some food, despite not really being hungry.

And here we are this morning.  Still feeling "eh".  Trying not to freak out that I missed two long run weeks in a row and, rather than being back up, like I was anticipating at the beginning of last week, my weekly mileage plummeted below 30 for the first time since the week of June 12.  I have 5 weeks and 5 days until race day.

Plan Miles: 51
Total Weekly Miles: 27.75