I’ve scheduled in the occasional bike workout during this training session.

There is at least one more unusual training week coming - I’ve scheduled another race in September that, even though I knew about it when I finalized this training plan, will likely cause that race week to go a little bit differently than planned.

But this week was the second of the two most unusual training weeks of the plan.

I knew about this, too, when I finalized the training plan - it was move-in week for my daughter going to college, so I suspected I might not be able to stick to my routine mid-week.

What I didn’t know is that I’d be doing the yard work I had to do this week (which I mentioned yesterday, as many of you probably already know).

I’m on my feet enough cutting the grass that I don’t need to do anything extra those days - but I decided to hop on the bike for 20 minutes (pictured) afterwards knowing I might not make my end-of-the-week workouts.

I did manage to squeeze in a bodyweight workout Friday morning, which was better than nothing. The week shook out like this (I only didn’t do a 3-4 mile run on Friday that was supposed to include hills…but between the parking lot location and walking back and forth to the car and around different parts of campus I did cover quite a bit of hilly terrain that day):

Monday: 4 miles, 11:11/mi pace

Tuesday: 20 minute bike workout (and lots of cutting grass)

Wednesday: I realized maybe I should be describing my intervals - this workout topped out at 3/4 mile at pace. We’ll be getting up to a mile next week. This week was a total of 7.64 miles in 1:24:01. I also did a core workout in the morning.

Thursday: Travel day

Friday: 10 minute bodyweight workout (and hilly move-in walking)

Saturday: 8 mile long run (after traveling home)

I think, all things considered, it was a good week of training. I could have pushed the long run to Sunday but I like keeping Sunday as my rest day to mark the end of one week and let Monday begin the next week. If I had run on Sunday I would have wondered if I should take Monday off and throw off the next week…it gets to be kind of complicated. And I would have been miserable and cranky the rest of Saturday.

So I ran later on Saturday afternoon to get it done, and I felt good about it. (I tripped over a curb and almost took a digger. Hopefully I don’t feel it in my back from the awkward step I took trying to recover.)

Total Miles for Week 5: 19.64 (I’m a little concerned this wasn’t an increase from last week but I also expected it because of the Friday run I missed. We’ll get there.)

Total Miles Overall: 122.37