More Birthday Celebrating

Since I want my birthday to last as long as possible, here's another post on some of my birthday activities...and some of the things I ate on my birthday.

The day started off with a Dunkin Donut:

Unfortunately, I can't say it was purchased for my birthday specifically. Patrick and Kyle's girlfriends with both in town for the weekend, so we had a full house. They bought a dozen donuts on Sunday morning and luckily this one was leftover for me on Monday morning.

In the afternoon, Katie and I met up for a 2 mile rollerblading adventure. I am happy to report that neither of us fell, which was surprising to me since I haven't rollerbladed in probably at least 12 years. It was a lot of fun and I can't wait to rollerblade again!

And in the evening I met my parents, Kyle, Erin, and Danny at California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. We had a few issues overall with the quality of service and staleness of the tortilla chips, but everything else was great! 

We sat outside, which was nice for a summer night.  A little chilly, but not too bad.  And we had a nice view of the mall parking lot.

I had the fish tacos as my meal.

I of course had a lot of the bread and butter. Our main problem with the service was that the bread and water did not appear on our table in a timely manner, even after asking for it. The best way to judge a restaurant is how fast they bring the bread and water (or tortilla chips at a Mexican restaurant). And then we treated ourselves to dessert!

So that was a lot of the birthday fun! I took another few days off from running again... I did a short run yesterday though and have mile repeats on the schedule for tonight. I am also definitely getting in a long run this weekend, hopefully 18 miles!

And I got an iPad!  So now I'll probably be using it to post instead of my regular computer.  I can't seem to get the pictures centered from the iPad though, so that's just something we'll have to deal with.

Week 7 Plan and Fartlek Workouts

So I did not run this past week.  Well, I ran about a grand total of 5 miles but it was so miniscule that I'm not even counting it really.  It was way too hot this week and I guess I just needed a mental break.  But now there are 12 weeks of training left for the Chicago Marathon.  I have a solid base so far, but now I really need to step up the mileage.  I say that every week, don't I?  So here's what I'm thinking for Week 7:

Monday - 7.5 miles normal
Tuesday - Track Workout
Wednesday - 7.5 miles fartlek
Thursday - REST
Friday - 6 miles normal
Saturday - 16 miles normal
Sunday - REST

This would put me around 40-45 miles for the week.  I'd really like to get up to at least 40 miles a week here on out, but I seem to be struggling with getting in 5 or 6 quality days a week.  I did make a new running playlist though, so maybe that will get me going.  What's on it, you ask?  I'll share that tomorrow because obviously it's awesome and I like to push my musical preferences onto others.  I'm going with 7.5 miles for my runs on Monday and Wednesday because I figure I will just do the forest preserve loop.  I'll try to make Wednesday a fartlek workout.  Here are some of my favorite fartlek workouts:

• 10 x :30 hard with 1:30 easy = 20 minutes total
• 10 x 1:00 hard with 1:00 easy = 20 minutes total
• 3 x 3:00 hard, 3:00 easy, 2:00 hard, 2:00 easy, 1:00 hard, 1:00 easy = 36 minutes total
• 6:00 hard, 6:00 easy, 5:00 hard, 5:00 easy, and so on down to 1:00 =  42 minutes total

Each of those workouts would also include a warm-up and cool down.  And for my lovely friends or family reading this who aren't really runners and don't know what a fartlek is, here is a general idea taken from the always reliable Wikipedia.  "Fartlek" is a Swedish word meaning "speed play" that blends continuous training with interval training.  This causes stress on both the aerobic and anaerobic systems.  Technically then, I guess the Yasso 800s I did a week ago could be considered a fartlek since it was continuous running with fast intervals.

In other athletic news, I bought rollerblades last week!!  I am excited to use them, but it makes me a little nervous because I know rollerblading is just completely different muscles than running and I don't want to get injured if I fall or something.  But I definitely want to try them out sometime this week.  Katie will be home from St. Louis this weekend for 2 WEEKS and she has rollerblades so I'm envisioning some trips to Lake Arlington or the forest preserve together coming up.  Apparently, inline skating marathons are a thing.  So now added to my list of ultimate life goals is to complete a marathon on rollerblades.  I seem to think that it would be easier than running, or at least is a shorter time span than it would take to run a marathon.

What is your favorite fartlek workout?

Do you have rollerblades?