Trying to speed it up

As my last post mentioned, I'm trying to focus on speed as I've got a 10K in 4 weeks (with a 4.9K tempo the week before).

Last week was a decent collection of some hot cross-training in the garden (I'm not kidding, 1.5 hour efforts of weeding, pruning, and harvesting in the sun are a total body workout), walking, a bit of jogging, and at least 20% hard effort, with the return to the track being the star of the show. 

Garden basil and tomatoes, E's grilled eggplant & burrata.

The day after track I went out for a 3 mile recovery run with a new friend from my local running group and was shocked to be reminded just how hard 11:30 pace can feel the day after speedwork.  Saturday's run turned into an hour walking on the phone with a good friend, followed by 3 miles walking to and from Brunch.  Sunday, I continued with the lazy weekend at home, waking up to plant myself on the couch, missing the local running group long run and finishing my book.  I'm not gonna lie:  it felt wonderful.

Unfortunately, I totally played myself as it had gotten much too hot by the time I finally set out.  My goal of at least 6 miles medium-easy quickly became 4.5 miles total of medium effort miles interspersed with some walking.   The weekly mileage total was 26.97 -- not great, but I would like to try to clear 30 for the next 3 weeks, so I'll need to find a way to step it up.

Despite the lack of serious running effort over the weekend, I had no guilt and easily enjoyed our date night out on Sunday night.

One of the best moriawase meals we've had in ages.

And now it's one of my favorite weeks of the year -- BURNING MAN.  When half of my clients and half of the people on the other sides of my deals are completely off work (which means I get a psuedo-vacation for free)!  My goal is to take advantage of this slow work week and get in a good easy effort medium/long run mid-week as well as a couple of speedier efforts and recovery runs.