Week 13 - Dreamy peak week

This week....this week was a magical week. I did absolutely no strength training, but I did spend a collective 14 hours on a plane, 60 hours in Paris, and 5 hours running. I ran 36 miles in two beautiful cities, PR'ed in the half marathon, AND enjoyed a kir on a Parisian terrace. It was a truly wonderful week and a fantastic way to head into taper city.

A recap of my week's workouts (March 10-16):
Monday: Off - check!
Tuesday: AM run - check! 10 x 400 before work
Wednesday: Off - check!
Thursday: AM run - check! 8 gorgeous miles around Paris
Friday: Strength? - nope
Saturday: Off - check!
Sunday: 13.1 for the NYC Half + 6.9 miles! - check! 21 miles and a half marathon PR!

Here's a rundown of this week's runs:

Speed: 
This week's speed workout was 10 x 400m at 8.5 mph with 400m rest (plus a warm up and cool down). I ended up going just 6.7 miles in the hour - 400m rest is a LOT of time off when you're just doing 400m repeats! The 400s felt really good, and in the last two repeats I bumped up the speed to 8.6 mph. I was so happy to get this in before my flight to Paris that night!

Tempo: 
I arrived in Paris early Wednesday morning and spent most of the day working. I woke up Thursday to sunny skies and temps in the mid-50s - I couldn't NOT run in that weather! So I set out for a scenic loop of Paris, hitting up the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Champs-Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, the Trocadero, Eiffel Tower, the Seine and its many bridges, and Notre Dame, before heading back to the hotel, which was near the Louvre. It was perfect! Even though I spent just over an hour running, an hour and a half had elapsed from when I started to when I finished, since I took about a million pictures. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful run!

Tuileries, Champs-Elysees, and L'Arc de Triomphe in the distance 

Gorgeous flowers 

Eiffel Tower selfie! 

Amazing route throughout Paris!

Long:
I went to bed last night looking forward to running 20 miles in the morning. I felt well rested, happy, and excited. It was my last super long run before marathon day! This positivity helped me immensely during the race.

I split today's run into three: 3.1 miles to the NYC Half start, 13.1 miles during the half, and 5.1 miles after a nice, long nap. I had to hustle to the start line but made it with about 5 minutes to spare, hopping over the barricade to my corral. My Garmin went craaazy during the race and said I ran 14.24 miles...now, I know I suck at running tangents, but I don't suck THAT badly. Somewhere along 7th Avenue it just went a little wonky and for the rest of the race it was all wrong with crazy splits. Ohhh well. 

The race was actually REALLY great! I wasn't such a fan of it last year, but this year I was really impressed by it. Around mile 9 I realized that I could probably PR today, and started to kick it up a bit in the last two miles. In the last four miles, I also did some visualization for marathon day, imagining that I was at mile 22, tired but strong, and how I was going to be so happy to be running in PARIS!!! I also negative split the race - the first 5k was at an 8:33 pace, and ended with an overall 8:15 pace! So happy with this race today. It was awesome! Came in at 1:47:54, which is a minute and a half PR. Plus friends came and met me, and we went for brunch at a cute little diner - I was hungry!

Shiny medal, shiny PR

The last 5 mile run followed a lovely nap and was a simple out and back. It was cold and windy, and probably not ideal that it was done a few hours after running the 16 miles (ideally I'd have run all the miles at once, but I did what I could with what I had), but 21 miles for the day is GREAT!!! I'm so happy with today's long run!

Overall, this was a GREAT week of running. No strength training, but a trip to Paris, a half-marathon PR, AND I got all three runs in! 

Here's the plan of attack for my first week in Taper City, USA (March 17-23):
Monday: Off
Tuesday: Run
Wednesday: Strength
Thursday: Run
Friday: Strength
Saturday: Run
Sunday: Off (might switch Saturday and Sunday)

Hope you all have fantastic weeks!