Will Run for Pizza

Last night Lacey came over to catch up and help me carb-load. My marathon is in 51 days, so I better start now, right?

I had just gone food shopping and offered to make pasta, but she said she really wanted to try the Trader Joe’s pizza dough so she bought some and brought it over, along with all the toppings. I didn’t complain. Edited to add: we used this recipe from Eating Well. 

We spread the dough into a cookie sheet and cooked it in the oven for 10 minutes. I’ve never done this before, and my pizza always ends up either overdone or under-done, so I’m going to try this next time.

Caramelized onions.

Chopped tomatoes.

The pizza with the tomato sauce, onions, and mozzarella, all ready to go in the oven.

I can tell you for a fact that not all of that mozzarella made it onto the pizza. A good amount made it into our mouths. For quality control purposes, obviously.

As usual, someone was sleeping on the job.

Once the pizza came out of the oven for the second time, we added prosciutto.

For the final touch, we added the mixture of arugula and tomatoes (tossed in lemon, olive oil and salt and pepper.)

We decided to skip a side salad since there was salad on top of the pizza.

Unpictured: the wine-induced dance party had while cooking. I’ve been doing it wrong this entire time. Wine + Beyonce = much more fun.

This morning’s run!

This morning I had ~8 miles of speedwork on my schedule:

2 miles warm up, 6x1K (~.62 miles) at 7:52 pace with 1:15 rest in between, 2 miles cool-down.

I’ve heard that you’re not supposed to work on increasing speed and distance at the same time, but both this year and last year, I’ve found that I’ve definitely gotten faster while marathon training. For me, it seems like it’s because after running something like 18 miles, anything shorter than that feels like nothing.

I ran 18 miles? Dude, I can push myself for 1K.

Speedwork is hard and definitely my least favorite sort of run, so I can’t say I was looking forward to this workout–especially since I was still a little sore from Tuesday’s Soul Cycle despite a much-needed sports massage yesterday. But although I don’t usually run with music, I set my iPhone to play my 25 top-played songs, set my Garmin for my workout, and hit the river. No pictures because I was running my ass off.

1K Splits:

1: 4:54 (7:54 pace)

2: 5:03 (8:09 pace)

3: 4:50 (7:48 pace)

4: 4:58 (8:02 pace)

5: 4:43 (7:38 pace)

6: 4:43 (7:38 pace)

Half of them were well below my target pace. I’ll take it! Okay, I guess I dread speedwork, but I don’t hate it, because I felt pretty badass when I was done. True story: during those tough 1Ks, I totally channeled Ali and Emily. They are my speedy motivators. (I also thought about really wanting to do some 5Ks once I’m done with the marathon.)

Do you dread speedwork, too? Who or what motivates you through tough runs?