Week-13: 9/29-10/5

-Monday (9/29): 5 mile tempo run. I did a pretty hard tempo run on Renner Trail averaging 7:50 per mile for 5 miles. My HR stats are here.

-Wednesday (10/1): 6 mile track workout. I met few other Team Asha runners and did a nice track workout at Park Hill Junior High School. I did 2x1200 intervals followed by 3x800 with ~2:00 walking breaks. I did pretty hard intervals as I averaged 5:04 for 1200m and 3:24 for 800m. I did 2 miles of cool down for a total of 6 miles. The details of the run are here.

-Saturday (10/04): Today's plan was to race at DRC's The Loop 15K and do 6-7 miles before the race for a total of 16 miles. Sravanthi is doing 5K and she had to come with me and wait in the car till the race started at 8am. I started off running with the group around 6:45am and we did 7 miles of easy running in about 1:05. The weather was great and temperature was in mid 60s. The race was about to begin when we finished our pre-race miles and I did met the rest of Team Asha runners. Race started around 8:05 and sun was out and temperature was about 70F. I started out fast and soon realized that I did 8:05 for the first mile. I was happy with the pace and tried to maintain it as much as I could. The first 6 miles were good and I was around 8:00 pace. But, I think my HR was creeping up slowly every mile and I felt that I might not be able to sustain this pace for the whole race. I took a 30 sec walk break after mile 6, and that did indeed help a lot. I started to feel better and miles 7-9 went by fast and I was able to sprint to finish in 1:14:44. All of Team Asha runners did good and Sravanthi finished her 5K in ~49mins. My run details are here and the race results are here.

-Sunday (10/05): I wanted to maintain my tradition of a good bike ride on Sunday and went out to Whiterock Creek Trail. I started on the creek trail and after 7 miles merged with Whiterock lake trail to loop the lake and came back on the creek trail to finish a 24 mile bike ride. I did the first half of the ride about 16mph and the second half in~17mph. I had a great feeling after this bike ride as I have ridden the bike little faster than normally, which probably explains the fact that I was a little sore in my legs after the ride. Details of the ride are here.

Week-12: 9/22-9/28

-Wednesday (9/24): 5.5mi Hill workout @ Prairie Creek elementary school. It was my first time at this place and it had nice long hills which makes it ideal for hill workout. After about 0.8 mile of warm up, I did 5 hill repeats. Each repeat was about 0.37mi with ~60 foot elevation gain.

-Thursday (9/25):6 mile tempo run @ Renner Trail. I did an easier tempo run at an average pace of 9:11 per mile as I did a hill workout the day before. I usually take a rest day between 2 hard workouts as per FIRST training, but this week I could not do it as I skipped running on Monday and Tuesday. My HR stats are here.

-Saturday (9/27): 15 mile long run. I finally was able to join Greg's group (8:30-9:30pace group) for this week's long run. The group was planning to run at an average pace of 9:15 per mile, which is just about what I wanted to do. We started off at Mockingbird DART station and ran toward the Whiterock lake. By about mile 5 we joined the lake and had a great run around most of the lake. I saw our other Team Asha runners, who are running with other pace groups. We took a water break at mile 12 and then finished off well back at the DART station. Our route can be found here. My stats for the run are, avg. pace 9:25 min/mile and Avg.HR=150.

-Sunday (9/28): 24 mile bike ride on Chisholm & Bluebonnet trail. I got on my bike after about 10 days and it felt good. I started from my home and got on the Chisholm trail in couple of miles. It was a nice and long trail when you combine Chisholm and Bluebonnet trail and I could bike about 24 miles in ~1:45. My average speed was less than what I would have liked, due to the frequent breaks at the many places the trail crosses the roads, but other wise it was a nice trail to either bike or run. I am thinking, next time I might bike on the Whiterock creek and lake trails from my home, which would make the round trip about 30 miles.

Week 10: 9/8-9/14

-Tuesday (9/9): I could not run on Monday as I was too sore from my move over the weekend. I think I have climbed the stairs at least 5o times, which is a pretty good cross-training workout :) I heard about the Plano Prediction 5K run for today from a friend and I was raring to go as I wanted to do this for a long time. It is interesting to do a race where you try to match your prediction time without a watch. I was a few minutes late and my friend was waiting for me. We started off later than the main group. I have predicted a time of 25:00. I started running my usual tempo pace, which I realized later that I was running close to 7:30 pace. After a mile, my friend wanted to slow it a little as he predicted 26:26, and so I was running my myself. I realized that I was running too fast and I took the last mile a little easy. I ended up finishing in 24:01 which is about a minute slower than my prediction. They give ribbons for the top 20 closest times to their prediction times. I finished 29th in prediction differential with 59 secs. I am planning to join the Plano Pacers club and join their monthly prediction runs and also races.

-Thursday (9/11): Interval workout at JJ Pearce High School. I have a good track workout with a sequence of intervals 1200,1000,800,600,400,200 with 200m rest intervals. I did average ~7:00 pace for the intervals.

-Saturday (9/13): Many of Team Asha runners are planning to run the Vibha Dream Mile 5K/10K race on Sunday. I have registered for 10K and Sravanthi for 5K. I actually planed n doing some biking today as I will do the race tomorrow. But, thanks to Mr.Ike, I did not do biking as it was very windy and raining. I went out for a 6 mile run on Renner Trail, which is right next to my place. It is a nice trail and also has quarter mile marks for part of the trail. I had to take shelter under a tree for 5 mins in the middle when it rained heavily. It was great weather to run, overcast, windy but humid though. I finished my 6 miles @ ~9:00 pace.

-Sunday (9/14): Vibha's Dream Mile 10K. I got my PR in 10K by a few minutes as I finished in 47:16 (7:37 pace). Details are in another post.