getting there!

wednesday: 5 easy in the arb. legs felt kind of dead, probably from doing the workout on monday and then lifting on tuesday, but other than that, i felt pretty good.

thursday: 6 easy in the arb. stopped by stadium and then hit the trails - legs felt decent, but lower legs especially still felt a little heavy.

friday: 10 with a workout. woof. this was a great workout, but pointed out how far i still have to go. it was a great first step, though, and i walked away feeling really good about how it had gone. i did it with nichole, brenden and brooke - n & bd running together and brooke and me together. we were planning to do 2 miles warm-up, 2x2 miles of threshold with 2 min between, and then possibly a 5th mile of workout. we did them on the dundas path, starting by qt, and the first mile was 6:34, followed by a 6:32 or something. the second mile was kind of uphill. i was starting to fall off brooke just a bit toward the end, but then i'd recatch her and i think i finished with her. she got going on the second one, though (probably since it was a little downhill), and i went through the first mile in around 6:22 and she had a few meters on me. i could tell that running her pace was forcing it for me, and i needed to go a little slower. the second, flat mile, was 6:37. by that second mile, everything from calves to hams to glutes was getting really tight and hurty. not like tying up, but i could tell that my muscular strength is not so great right now. those are going to be really good workouts for that, but i had never thought of threshold workouts as strength workouts before. maybe i was pushing my pace a little (very possible) but at the same time, i don't know that i could have stayed that close to target pace for that long with that little recovery if it wasn't pretty close to threshold. my guess is that the pace was right, but my muscles are weak right now. i need to start doing some hills and more workouts like that one. i could tell i had worked hard because i was having to work a little bit to run 8:20s on the way back for the cooldown. that was a good feeling and one i haven't had in a really long time.

saturday: OFF. kind of weak-willed, but also thought it wouldn't be the worst thing to keep taking a day off each week until my mileage gets a little higher and the track season is over.