Wow, has it already been 5 weeks since I started focusing training on my goal race?  Hard to believe.  I was quite pleased with how last week went – I had some decent runs, and overcame some temptations/excuses to shorten my planned sessions.  I love that running more distance has changed my mental outlook to now looking forward to seeing how I do on my longer runs, rather than being scared about doing them.  I am also realizing how lucky I am to be able to take the time to do my longer runs. Time is definitely always at a premium, and I am appreciative when I get to selfishly spend some of it training!

Finally got to run in some mud this week!

I started the week out with an easy 6km run around my neighbourhood loop on Monday night.  My legs felt good even after some longer running over the weekend.  Tuesday was a rest day since I had a trail race on Wednesday evening.

Wednesday evening was my Trail Running Series Race #5 and it went well.  I wrote up some more detail here, and I was happy with winning my 5th race for some more series points.  I think I finished in my second fastest time, so I was happy to see the legs still have some speed left in them.

Thursday evening I took another rest day before my weekend long runs.  Friday after work I had planned to do my 20km run on the paved pathways near my office.  The temperatures were again crazy hot and the humidity was high.  This was definitely a workout that I second guessed since I was doing it at the hottest part of the day on a mostly exposed, sunny route.  In the end I wanted to do it, and tried to keep a reasonable pace to deal with the heat.  The first 10km out felt good, but I started to struggle a little on the way back.  I definitely was feeling the effects of the heat for the rest of the night and likely pushed it a little too hard.

I was happy to wake up feeling better on Saturday morning in time for an early morning 5km road race we had planned.  Again, there is more detail on it here.  I managed 3rd overall in a decent time.

Gear pile for 30km run

Sunday was a 30km trail run.  I have only run 30km once before (Around the Bay Road Race) and this would be my longest run on trails.  I headed out around 11AM, and managed to get in the first 15km before a thunderstorm hit!  I was actually rejuvenated by the downpour since it really cooled things off.  It was so humid that I was soaked anyway so the rain didn’t bother me at all.  I was really happy with my socks and shoes that made my feet feel good even though I was running on singletrack that was a 4-5 inch deep stream of runoff in most places!  The rain carried on for the rest of my run but I managed to get in all 30km as planned.  One of the biggest challenges of this distance is linking up enough trails to cover the distance, but I managed to string it together without too much repetition!

Pieced together 30km of trails!

Some pre-downpour trail

With that, week #5 was complete.  I still worry about my speed not being as fast as I want it for the race, but I will keep working at it.

Next week’s plan is:

• Monday – rest
• Tuesday -8km road run
• Wednesday – Hill repeats
• Thursday – 12km road run
• Friday – 20km road run (hopefully this week is cooler!)
• Saturday – 40km road ride on bike
• Sunday – 30km trail run

As always, thanks for reading.