Finally A Good Training Week!

This week's training was pretty decent. I got through all my scheduled running mileage (except for one run that I cut short) and a strength training session. I haven't done any swimming yet but I'm hoping to do that tomorrow. This morning I did 12 miles for my long run. I was the only one in my running group that was scheduled for anything over 8 miles so I ran 4 miles by myself and then 8 miles with my group...

And I decided to try hydrating with my new addiction...

I put my hydration pack (filled with coconut water) in the freezer overnight so it was ice-cold for my run this morning. It was amazing!!! It's hard to find the right hydration balance for humid runs because you want to ensure you're getting enough fluid, without putting yourself at risk of nausea and vomiting because your stomach is too full. Recently plain water has been making me nauseous, but the coconut water this morning was perfect. 

It's Summer so the weather has been consistently humid for my runs. I'm hoping that the Summer training will translate to stronger performances in Berlin and Chicago. My current goal is to get to an 11mins/mile pace (or faster) for my mid-week moderate distance training runs; a sub-11mins/mile pace for my 1 mile running streak runs; and a sub-11:30mins/mile pace for my long runs... by the end of July. And then if I can maintain that throughout August and September I think I'll be in good shape for my Berlin Marathon 5 hour finish time goal. The weather in Berlin in September should be much cooler, and at the very least a lot less humid than Florida tends to be in the Summer so that will help also (hopefully).

Getting to my pace goals is going to take a lot of work because I'm definitely not very fast, especially compared to other Garmin users my age...

But, thanks to my running streak, I have been running more...

And running farther...

While 99% of other users get their weekend long runs completed, I plan to spend the rest of my Saturday watching Season 1 of Game of Thrones. I started watching it yesterday (yes I know, I'm very late to the party) and it took me a couple of episodes to actually start to like it. But now I'm more than halfway through Season 1 and it's been growing on me. I don't know much about the storyline other than what's happened so far (so please no spoilers) but I do know not to get attached to any of the characters 😉.

Have you watched Game of Thrones?

How was your training this week?

Do you set pace goals for training runs?