Thanks for the encouraging comments on my post yesterday. I was having a rough day all around – mostly because I was absolutely exhausted. I may or may not have slept through an hour-long conference call… and then slept for 10.5 hours last night.
After work, I went to a going-away happy hour for Travis and one of his co-workers because… Travis got a new job! Next week is his last week at his current company and he’ll start his new job the following Monday (2/27). He’s pretty excited. He’ll be doing the same type of engineering (hydraulics and hydrology – what they call H&H) but he’ll be with a smaller company (1 of 2 full-time employees) and will be working from home. He’s also getting a fairly significant pay raise, which will definitely help us be more aggressive in paying off our mountain of student loans.
The thing I’m actually most excited about with this new job, though, is that the dogs will no longer have to live 80% of their lives in our laundry room. I’m really hoping Katy will mellow out – she kind of went berserk when I started back to work after being unemployed and hasn’t gone back to being her regular self.
After sleeping in until 7:00 this morning, I feel more human but I’m still planning on not doing a workout tonight, and on going to bed at a grandma time. Last night, Travis and I both went to bed at 8:30, no joke. He had stayed up really late the night before playing a hockey double-header and I had gone to bed too late all week long. No shame. I’m taking full advantage of blowing off workouts while I can because for the next 18 weeks, there will be none (or very little) of that ::knock on wood::.
Speaking of the next 18 weeks, I got inspired today and updated my training plan with intentional hill days:
After looking more closely at the elevation profile of Mayor’s Marathon, I realized that its hills are similar in length and climb to the ones I ran during the Ralston Creek Half. So… I have to start training on hills, and real hills, not the wimpy little things I was calling hills. Lucky for me, Colorado is full of them.
I thought this article was really helpful about defining the different types of hill work and several articles (including that one) say that because hill workouts are so intense, they should only be done once or twice a week. I went for once a week during the first half of my training, and then once every 2 weeks for the last half. I didn’t want to be too ambitious because this is still only my first marathon.
As with everything, I’m going to continue to play things by ear. If I’m feeling strong, I’ll incorporate some more hills. And if I’m feeling tired or injured, I’ll back off. Adding the hill designation to my schedule was just to get the hill workouts on my radar and give me something of a strategy with timing.
And the most exciting part of my day… it’s Friday and I get a 3-day weekend! Glorious.
Do you get a 3-day weekend?
Life, Really Blog 