Wow? Only week two of training… it feels like much longer for some reason. Probably because of all of the base training, I guess. This past week was much better than week one. I’m linking up today with MissSippiPiddlin’ and HoHo Runs for their Weekly Wrap link up to recap week #2 of 50K training.

Monday – Rest.

Tuesday – 2 mile run with Sven (the treadmill), followed by a strength training session. My strength training included 10 minutes of abs, and a circuit of lunges, squats, and push ups.

Wednesday – 4 mile hill workout with Sven. I had 503 vertical feet in elevation gain during the run. I wasn’t sure if I was doing a good job simulating these hill workouts on Sven, so I looked up my Garmin data for the last hill workout I did outside (on Dec. 30). That run was 5 miles and I covered 518 feet in elevation. So that makes me feel like I’m coming relatively close on the treadmill, at least. 🙂

Thursday – Strength training: 10 minutes of abs and the same lunge/squat/push up circuit as Tuesday.

Friday – Rest.

Saturday – 15 mile long run on trails at Pandapas pond. This run went pretty well. Don’t get me wrong, it was a tough run, but it felt great to cover the distance after missing my long run last weekend.

This was a solo run and I’m still dealing with the whole dog issue a bit. However, I’ve now watched two great videos on how to protect yourself when you encounter a dog (this one and this one) that made me feel better. I guess I needed to get to a point where I accepted that yes, this could happen but here’s what I’ll do if it does, instead of simply being afraid. I also reached out to Logan, who runs a lot of trails for advice and who has been bitten by a dog while running before. Her advice was similar to what I had done – to acknowledge the fear and have a plan in place if something does happen. It helped to have her qualify that, though. Sometimes you just need to hear things from other people.

I never needed to use my pepper spray on this run, and I had numerous encounters with loose dogs. I just remembered my plan and paid close attention to the body language of the dogs. The only time I started to get freaked out was the 4 miles I spent running around the higher elevations on the mountain where it was so foggy there was basically zero visibility. That meant I had less time to react. But I just kept reviewing my plan in my head and nothing ever happened while I was in the fog anyway.

I had a pretty tough 2 mile climb up the mountain from mile 3.5 to about 5.5, where I alternated running and hiking. I felt like it went well, though, and I need to work on improving my hiking speed anyway. Overall, I covered 1770 feet in elevation gain, according to my Garmin. The 50K looks to have about 1300 feet, so hopefully I’m doing enough to prepare for that.

I felt pretty strong on this run up until mile 9 or 10 (even after the climb). That’s when the fatigue really set in and I had to really focus to keep running. I considered calling it at mile 13 and mile 14 (after missing last week’s long run), but decided I wanted to do the full 15 miles. Good thing, too, or I would have missed this Charlie Brown tree hiding just off of the trail!

My final two miles went back through the parking lot (and past my car, ugh!) and around the pond. It’s basically flat, except it is uphill back to the parking lot. It’s not a big hill, but it feels like it after 3 hours of running. By the way, Tailwind is magic and I’m really starting to like that stuff and use it more!

Sunday – 3 mile run with Kim at a nearby park. Surprisingly I didn’t feel all that tired or sore after Saturday’s run. I think it helped that a. it wasn’t on pavement and b. the elevation varied a lot which meant I was using lots of different muscle groups. I definitely felt more sore after our run, though! 🙂 It was also in the upper 30’s, super windy, and flurrying a bit at the end, which made for a pretty cold run.

I had an easy hike on the schedule, but I did plenty of hiking the day before. Plus I wanted to run with Kim 🙂

Total Miles: 24

If you run on the treadmill, how do you stay entertained? I usually watch TV or a movie. Lately, I’ve been working my way through Hunger Games.
What is your least favorite type of weather to run/workout in?