(China) Weeks in Review

Shanghai Skyline - Captured on my first run along the Bund River

Week of October 13th
14 hour flight to China

Nick and I ran through Beijing!

3 Days in Beijing
1 Day at the Great Wall
Term 2 Kick-off in Shanghai
42 miles
1 Day off

This week started off with a run with Jilane and Meagan in DC and hopping on a plane to Beijing soon after that.
 I landed in Beijing on Tuesday, feeling excited to be on a continent I had never been to.  I got in several runs with Nick in the pollution-laced air and even ran a light minuters workout on Saturday in Shanghai along the Bund.  All in all, I'm really happy to be here and am so excited to get in some more runs!

Week of October 20th
47 miles
1 Day off
7 miles @ 630 pace on the treadmill

Llama temple (photo courtesy of Nick Alcantara)

This week was full of classes daily from 8AM - 6PM but it's a totally different vibe than the MBA residency in Durham.  There is actually time in the evening to go out and explore Shanghai and to get to know the city.  Because of this, it's been much easier for me to run around the city, my own way of exploring around.  One day the smog was too thick for my taste, so I hopped on the treadmill to get some miles in and closed the last 3 miles in sub-6:00 pace to get in some work. After a night singing my lungs out at karaoke, I forgot to set my alarm and woke up at 750am and had to frantically get dressed so I wasn't late for class that started at 8AM.  Somehow I made it to class with 2 minutes to spare and was so relieved, but obviously bummed that I didn't get to run. On the last day of residency, I organized a group of classmates to run with two of our professors, one of which was leading us through some cool places in the city since he lives in Shanghai.  It was a great way to get to know our professors and the city. On Sunday, it was time for me to go home and I boarded a plane at 4PM and was home at 10PM in Durham on the same day. Time travel rocks!

In the end, this residency helped me realize that I can't use these residencies as an excuse to just totally ignore running.  I was hoping to get 60 miles in during this stay, but didn't reach that because I missed my alarm.  I think that going forward, if I buckle down, I will definitely be able to still hit a good mileage and continue to achieve my running goals without sacrificing my performance at Duke.

Shanghai Skyline on my run

My classmates Brenda, Sam and I during our last night in Shanghai

Organized a CCMBA running tour of Shanghai with our professor

Army Ten Miler Recap

Goal:
57:30
Top 5

Actual:
2.5 mile warmup
57:12, 3rd place overall female splits of 539, 542, 547, 532, 540, 552, 547, 547, 540, 542
1.5 cool down for about 14 miles total

After spending a week preparing for my second term of my MBA, it was a nice relief to hang out with Liz, Garrett and Meagan in the district the day before this race. I had been questioning how sound my rationale was to do a race right before heading out to China to kick off my second term, but after getting to DC, I knew that I had put in the work to post a decent time.  

Since I'm a whole month behind on my blog, I'm going to keep this short and just copy from what I posted in athleticore.  I felt really good about this race considering my lifestyle and lack of doing half marathon specific workouts. In the race, I had the pleasure of running with Meagan for about 2.5-3 miles and then after that I was solo, except for some of the men that either passed me or that I passed along the way.

I passed two Africans around 4-6 miles and then I passed another girl around mile 8. I had stomach cramps starting after mile 5, so that was a real struggle and a part of me really wanted to drop off and walk to the Lincoln Memorial instead. I really had to focus on not bargaining with myself to get a slower time, although I still fell victim to my own mind. For instance, after mile 6, I told myself "okay, you just have to keep running sub 6:00s to run sub 58." I should have told myself instead: "keep running sub 550", but I didn't want to hurt too bad. Fortunately, my body was somehow able to ignore my mind and push through to a pace faster than 5:50.  

Overall, I was very pleased with my effort and am impressed that I've been able to maintain a decent amount of fitness during my first term of my masters program.  Tomorrow, I head to China!

Broken Mile Repeats

Goal:
3-4 x (1000m-200m rest-400m) and 400m jog between sets:
330/80
328/78
326/76
324/76

Actual:
3.5 ish warmup in 27 min
1000m, 200m rest, 400m hard, 400m rest x 3
325 (54) 79 (1:53) 1 mile in 5:40
323 (59) 77 (1:56) 1 mile in 539
322 (59) 76 1 mile in 537
2.5 mile cool down on al buehler for 10 miles total

I love when Coach T-Bone gives me the option for how many intervals to complete.  Typically, if he gives me this option for a race-week workout, I definitely go on the lower end.  Out of habit, I did that today and opted for only 3.  As you can tell from the splits above, Billy and I definitely went out a little too hard on all of the 1000m repeats, so I felt like I had earned the right to only do 3 intervals.  At this point, there's not much more work I can do to affect the result of my race this Sunday.  I'm really excited to put my "MBA" fitness to the test and see what I'm able to accomplish while juggling a rigorous schedule of run, work, MBA homework, sleep, repeat.  I don't know if my fitness is where it was in June when i ran 56:46 en route to my half marathon PR, but I don't feel like it's out of reach to run 5:45-5:40 pace for the majority of this race.  The goal for me is to have fun and enjoy the beautiful scenery of DC as I run by all of the Capitol's monuments.  

Week in Review

60 miles
1 day off
1 workout fail
90 Min MLR with tempo and fast mixed in

I went ahead and took my first day off in a while on Monday of this week. I drove to Charlotte to be in the office for three days this week and it was nice to sleep in.  I did have one of my first workout fails of this training cycle.  Quite honestly, I'm surprised it hadn't happened sooner.  In all fairness to me, some stuff is going on with my family and I had a solid 10 days of training leading up to this workout fail, so it's totally understandable.

I made up for my fall from grace by having a great workout on Saturday with Billy. I'm just one week out from my goal race of Army Ten Miler and I feel like I'm as ready as I can be.  I depart for Beijing the day following Army Ten Miler, so it's been a nice way to deter focus from pre-race jitters to pre-MBA residency jitters.  I'm excited to begin my first international residency and to run around the streets of Shanghai!