Training With No Race in Sight

It's weird.

After the "Minneapolis Halloween Half" 10K just over 2 weeks ago, I've just been "doing" some workouts. Not "training," necessarily. Last week was an easier post-race week, but I still got in some decent run mileage (21 miles which is on the high side for me right now: I had 3 weeks of 22+ miles in recent months [2 leading up to the TC 10 Mile and 1 shortly after], but otherwise 20-21 miles have been my "bigger" weeks all year).

And this current week that's ending had a hard run, and some swims that I didn't have much reason to do hard. I'm usually good at getting in some swims / bikes / runs even if I'm not training for something specific, but it's hard for me to always want to go HARD with no race on the horizon. (Especially in the pool and on the bike.) Some 200s I did a week ago were my slowest times in a LOOOONG time. And my last outdoor ride was 3 weeks ago, and my last HARD ride was SEVEN weeks ago - everything has been just easy spins on the trainer since.

But I pushed myself to a solid run a few days ago. I busted out that 2x2 mile run workout that I like to do. I PLANNED on running around 6:00 pace, but then after my first 1/2 mile, I saw I'd gone out hard, so I thought "well why not?" and just kept the effort up. Here are my half-mile splits:

- 2:49, 2:57, 2:52, 2:54 = 11:33.95
- 3:00 walking rest
- 2:52, 2:58, 2:54, 2:55 = 11:41.51

I'm actually OK with the weeks of easy biking, as that's been a good "recovery" of sorts. But in the next few weeks, I need to step it up a bit. We're in a cold snap for another 4-5 days or so, but then I hope to get back outside for some longer rides. (All of my indoor work has been short lately.) And I think I need to sign up for a race too. Back at it!