Zombies, Run! Season 2 Mission 12

47:45 minutes - 3.02 miles - 15:47 min/mile

Couple of days late, but I finally did my three mile long run. I thought about just running at home, since it was only three miles, but in the end, I drove to the park and ran there. It was cold today! Low 40s when I left the house, and that wasn't until 10 AM. It was sunny but the wind was bitey. I wore long leggings, short-sleeved tee-shirt, and my zipper jacket. When I stepped out the door, I almost went back inside to put on more clothes, but I figured since it was sunny I'd be fine once I warmed up, and I was.

Overall time wasn't too bad. I'm still slow, but gradually getting my speed back. I didn't run intervals today, but walked after each zombie chase and at the end of each mile. There were two zombie chases, at 3 and 24 minutes. I'd barely started running before the first one, and evaded it fairly easily. The second was uphill at about a mile and a half, but I still evaded it just after the zombies got within 50 meters. Splits were 15:06, 16:04, and 15:28. Slow on the second uphill mile as usual, but pretty good for the other two.

I am going to try to get two short runs in this week before my 8-mile run this weekend. If I run Wednesday and Friday I can do the long run on Sunday and get back on track from there. My right knee was fine today, no twinges or soreness. I think I just need to build up my speed again.

Zombies, Run! Season 2 Mission 11

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37:09 minutes - 2.31 miles - 16:05 min/mile

Back to my regular runs! I was feeling pretty good today, no soreness or twinging at all in my knee. I am still a bit slow, but it will take some time to catch up to where I was before. I did run/walk intervals, not timed, but more or less one lap running, one lap walking.

 

There were three zombie chases, at 3, 14, and 31 minutes. I evaded them all, but the zombies got within 50 meters on the first and last chase, and within 20 meters on the middle one. Still, I did them, and it didn't hurt my knee. My splits were 15:52, 15:45, and 17:03 on that last 0.31 mile (I think I mostly walked it).

Since I did the 10K on Monday, I will just do this one midweek run and my next run will be my long run on Saturday. I'm only scheduled to do 3 miles, so that will work out fine. Then I'll have another week to build up some more strength before my 8-mile run the week after.

Today's mission was a cliffhanger, and pretty exciting! Although I did have to wonder what I was doing picking up supplies when I was running for my life from a zombie horde with a child in my arms...

Zombies, Run! Virtual Race 10K

1:48:07 hours - 6.40 miles - 16:53 min/mile

I did it! Decided after all to try the 10K — I thought it would be better to do the mileage I needed for my half marathon training, even if I did it very slowly, so I didn't get too far behind on that. If my knee started to hurt, I figured I'd just do more walking.

I drove to the park and got started around 9 AM. Fortunately, the weather was cloudy and cool, and stayed that way pretty much the whole time, so I didn't have to worry about the sun slowing me down! I took my sport watch and started out with a 1:1 minute run/walk ratio, which was what the watch was already programmed for. I kept my running pace nice and easy, and there were no zombie chases to worry about, so I just jogged along. Felt fine for the first 5K or so, but then my knee started to twinge, so I increased my walk breaks to 2 minutes for the next kilometer or so. Then my knee stopped twinging, so I went back to 1:1.

I made sure to drink some water every mile or so, and ate a GU at 3 miles. I didn't get tired or sore anywhere except the knee, so everything else was fine. After about 8 K, my knee started twinging again. I started to do the increased walk breaks, but they didn't seem to be helping. I was on the downhill stretch at that point, and it felt like I was jolting my right leg when I slowed down from my run breaks, so I just kept running. That worked until near the end, when my knee suddenly went, Nope! So I just walked the last few tenths.

My splits were 15:39, 16:55, 16:26, 17:20, 17:27, and 16:37. The first three miles weren't too bad. I slowed down after that mostly because of my knee and increasing the walk breaks. If my knee hadn't been bothering me, I probably could have kept it to around 16:30, which isn't bad considering I'm coming off of a two-week break due to an injury. Anyway I wasn't trying to go fast, just to finish without overdoing it, which I did.

The mission was fun, too. I'm glad I did the training runs, they added to the story. It was pretty exciting in places! It's cool how you get wrapped up in the story and really want to run in the dangerous spots. And my tee-shirt is awesome. Really glad I decided to sign up for the Virtual Race!

Zombies, Run! S2. Training Mission #2

44:30 minutes - 2.59 miles - 17:12 min/mile

Meant to run yesterday but got up too late to run before going to town, and didn't feel like it when I got home. Didn't really feel like it today, either, but I pushed myself out the door a little after 1 PM and finally got it done. It was chilly this morning, so I wore my long leggings and wool socks, but when I got outside it was 75 F and sunny and I should have worn shorts! But I didn't feel like going back inside to change, so I went ahead as I was.

The good news is that I think my leg is finally healed. I didn't feel any aches or twinges at all. The bad news is I'm still really slow, although I did do better than last time. I walked the first 10 minutes or so, and then slowly eased into running one lap/walking one lap. There was one zombie chase at 9 minutes, which I evaded. My splits were 17:26, 16:49, and 16:55, so I picked up some speed as I went along. It will probably take a couple of weeks to get back to my former speed. Today's run was probably slowed down a bit by the heat, too.

I think I will do the Virtual Race on Monday, and just do the 5K. Treat it like a midweek run, and resume doing long runs next Saturday. I'm only scheduled to do three miles next Saturday, because I was supposed to do 6.5 miles today, so that will be doable. Week after is supposed to be 8 miles, I don't know if I'll be able to do that, but we'll see how I feel when the time comes. If I slow down my pace, I can probably do the distance.

Zombies, Run! S1. Training Mission #1

43:23 minutes - 2.48 miles - 17:32 min/mile

Starting to feel like this whole training season is cursed! Last run was October 4, a Tuesday. The next day, I fell off the back of my truck while trying to pull the swamp cooler out of the window (it's too high up to handle from the ground, but the truck bed is just the right height to reach it) and strained my knee and pulled my calf muscle, and was too sore to run for a whole two weeks. In fact, my calf is still sore, but I am walking and moving okay and decided to try a slow, easy workout. I walked most of the way. After about 18 minutes I thought I might try running every other lap, but I'd only done one lap when I got a zombie chase, which was really hard to evade even though I'd been mostly walking up until then, so I decided to just walk the rest of the way except for zombie chases. There was one more chase at 31 minutes, which I evaded a little easier than the first one.

I felt fine walking but my knee is a little achy now. I hope I don't set myself back again.

So, I missed a 5-mile run two weeks ago and a 2.5-mile run last week. This week I'm scheduled for a 6-mile run, which I was going to make the Zombies, Run! Virtual Race 10k. My hope is that I can do the second training run on Friday, then the Virtual Race on Sunday, and just forget about speed and do a lot of walking. I want to still try to do the mileage I had planned, because I have no extra weeks built in to my marathon training schedule. I'll either have to catch up now or skip runs at the end, and I don't want to do that. But it will depend on how my knee feels. If it starts to get worse, I'll have to back off.

Zombies, Run! Season 2 Mission 10

33:31 minutes - 2.12 miles - 15:50 min/mile

Curse seems to have moved to Monday—this week, I was awakened at 3 AM Monday morning by a phone call from my mom's assisted living home. She'd been having nightmares and was all agitated and I had to go calm her down. Didn't get home till nearly 5 AM, went back to bed and slept for a couple more hours but felt groggy and dizzy all morning. So, no run yesterday.

Today's run was meh. I slept in a bit late, but it was still only around 50 F outside so it was fine for running. But I still felt tired and had a hard time getting going. I had already started the mission when I remembered that I'd turned the chases off, and I didn't want to stop the run to turn them on, so I just ran without them. Since I wasn't running with chases, I decided to do run/walk intervals, running one lap, then walking one. That felt easier but I was still tired. Splits were 15:54 and 15:23.

I downloaded the next mission and turned zombie chases back on, so I'll have them for Thursday's run.

Not sure when I'll get this week's long run in. I have plans for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It's only five miles, so I could squeeze it in Sunday morning if I get up early enough.

Zombies, Run! Season 2 Mission 9, 4 miles

1:03:18 hours - 4.01 miles - 15:47 min/mile

I was checking my training plan for the Star Wars Half Marathon to see how many miles I would do on my long run each weekend, assuming I followed the Zombies, Run! training plan, and saw that it only trains up to 12 miles before the half. That, plus the fact that it's five days a week, made me decide not to use that plan. So I went back to my Jeff Galloway schedules to see when I'd have to start to use the beginner's half marathon schedule (didn't feel up to doing the speed-increasing one, considering how blah I've been lately), and it turned out I'd already started. Heh. First week would have been last week for three miles, which, coincidentally, is what I ran last week. This week was four miles. So I did four miles this week, and I am officially training for Star Wars in January!

I went to the park to run, got there just before 8 AM. The weather was cool and sunny, just over 50 F when I started out, but warm enough in the sun once I got going. I turned off the zombie chases—I feel like they've been really tiring me out and making it hard to do even the short runs, and I didn't want to risk having a couple of chases right at the beginning using up all my energy. It felt weird not to have to worry about running from the zombies! But nice to just keep up a steady pace for my whole run. I didn't use a run/walk interval, but I did walk for a few minutes at the end of each mile. I don't know if I'll keep doing that for the longer runs or start doing run/walk/run at some point. I'll wait and see how I feel. If I decide to do timed intervals, I'll just use my sport watch, because I want to keep doing the Zombies, Run! missions.

I wore my running belt with water bottle even though it was not that long a run, because I didn't want to take the chance of getting dehydrated and having my blood pressure drop. I made sure to drink at 2 miles. I also took one GU with me and ate it at 3 miles. Going to try to keep up a schedule of drinking water every two miles and eating every three miles.

I felt pretty good and kept up a decent pace. Not my fastest, but under 16 minute miles, so I'm not complaining, especially with how crummy I've been feeling lately. My splits were 14:57, 16:33, 15:06, and 16:11—faster on the downhill miles, but I did slow down overall by more than a minute on the final mile, which was the same lower loop as the first mile.

Turns out I'll have a 6.5 mile run during the week of the Zombies, Run! Virtual Race, which will be perfect for doing the 10K.