This past week was a great training week for me. I ran four times during the week, including a tempo run on Tuesday evening at a beautiful track in Boston (with a great view of the city in the background), a short 3.5-mile run on Wednesday morning, a long 7-mile run on Saturday morning and a short recovery run on Sunday.

The tempo run was good besides the heat. Last week was the first heat-wave of the summer up here in New England and my lungs could definitely tell. I did the 3-mile tempo run in the evening as the sun was going down but the heat was pretty tough even at that time. The next morning, I woke up early to begin my run at 6:30 a.m. to try to beat the sun and the heat. It worked for the most part but towards the end I was feeling the heat.

My long run on Saturday was the longest I had ever run and it felt fantastic! It was 7 miles long, along the coast of Maine. The distance wasn’t bad at all but there were a lot of hills that got to me. The biggest ascent was in mile 5 and was 74 feet, with 0 feet of descent. That was tough! The total ascent was 144 feet and 139 feet of descent. But for the most part, I think I did pretty well. I averaged a 9:10 mile during the run and I’m hoping I can keep that up as I increase mileage.

My Sunday recovery run was the best of the week. It was a quick 5-k- I didn’t time it but it was roughly 25 minutes- along the coast of Maine again. My cousin Paige did the run with me and it was so hot when we went out that we came up with the ingenious idea to wear sports bras on our run and our bathing suit bottoms underneath our shorts. Immediately after we finished the run we went down to the beach, took off our shorts and dove into the cool Atlantic. It was amazing! I felt so great after it was over, I wanted to do it again.

Overall I’m really pleased with my training this week. On my off days I did strength training to build muscle in my legs and core. I learned a lot about how my body reacts to distance and I am going to use that for my next long run. I hope you all had a great week running too! Be on the lookout this week for a post about the myths of “runner’s high.” Happy running!