I hope everyone had a great weekend and that those stateside enjoyed their extra day (if you got one) 🙂

Even though I couldn’t get in high mid-week mileage, it was a confidence building week of training–one that I felt I needed at this moment as we’re inching closer and closer to the less than one month away mark!

Last Monday, I started off the week with a short 4 miler but I saw numbers I hadn’t seen in a while.

It was a negative split run and the first mile was actually already starting off at a good pace for me, so to get better from that 9:42 made me super excited. And that 8:36 last mile just had me smiling from ear to ear. Finally, that overall pace was a low I hadn’t seen in a while.

I rested Tuesday as my husband was out of town again and I had kid duty. I could have squeezed in a run but….I didn’t 🙂

Wednesday I met up with my run club and they had a mini hill workout on the schedule. I chose to bypass that and run another 4 miler instead.

A sub 100 degree run??? Wha???

It was close to another negative split and close to a similar overall pace as my Monday run. Again, this made me feel really, really good 🙂

Thursday I stuck to my 4 miler theme and ran around my neighborhood (It actually ended up being 4.2–you know you gotta count that point two). I took this run easier as I had had two good runs and didn’t want to push myself. It was still a great one with an overall pace of 9:48 and I finished with the last two miles faster than my first two.

It was an important rest day Friday as Saturday I had my first 20 miler of the training!

Yep, Saturday morning I woke up at zero dark thirty for this one (2:30 a.m. to be exact) and met up with another crazy friend also doing a 20 miler. We got going at 3:09 and planned to run 10 miles, five out and back, before meeting up with the rest of our run club at 5 a.m. We made one stop around the 7 and halfish mark for a potty break but that was the only stop of miles 1-10.

I was really happy with my consistency (see miles 4-7!!!) and I met up with my back 10 crew in high spirits.

Two running buddies were waiting for me at 5 to run my second set of 10 and we got going not too long after I got to the meeting spot. We were cruising at my pace (I wanted to be around the 10-10:30 mark) and they were uh-mazing at keeping me on track. I was feeling it around miles 12 and 13 and they quickly re-focused me.

I did stop at mile 15 (the turn around) but it was quick as I knew I didn’t want to lose momentum.

Then, at mile 17 I had to go potty 😦 and I was forced to stop again. This super bummed me out as like I had mentioned last week, I wanted to really try and avoid any stopping on my long runs.

I definitely felt that potty stop around mile 18 as my left calf started cramping a little. I didn’t want to stop though so I ran through it and sure enough, it dissipated after a few minutes. Whew!

Finally, I wanted to finish strong so my girls picked it up and I had them finish me at a 9:34 mile 20!!!

These 79 degrees felt great. The 65% humidity did not, lol!

I was so happy with this run and really pleased with the consistency in my splits. My slowest mile was 10:37 and my fastest (besides the last mile) was 10:06 so I was +/- 30 seconds the entire way!

It was also my husband’s first 20 miler this past weekend and he knocked his out of the ballpark too! Much faster than me, lol, but I still love him 😀

I ended the week with 32.2 miles and feeling pretty darn good about myself going into this week. My goal of sub 4:30 is looking realistic and I just hope all this hard summer training pays off. We’ll find out in about a month!

I hope everyone has a great week!! ❤ , helly

–How was your week of running?

–Do you try to keep consistent splits, negative splits, or do you just run and what happens, happens?