Week 20 for real??!? Where has the year gone?

And the marathon training keeps rolling. I am already tired.  Or still tired from an emotional April.  Who knows anymore.  My focus this week was to up my running from 4 days to 5.  My big goal for May is to consistently run 5 days a week.  My training plan actually calls for 6 days of running but one of the first changes I made was dropping Friday’s run.  If I handle May well, I may consider adding in Friday miles but I am not going to worry about that now.

Monday- 4 easy miles.  After an unplanned Sunday rest day, I was really hoping that these “easy” miles would feel easy.  Yeah, not so much.  My legs felt tired.  Part of it may be mental- I was a die-hard believer in never running on Mondays.    It’s only been a month-ish since I started running on Monday’s and I think I still mentally rebel sometimes.  #rebelwithoutaclue    Post-run, things snowballed quickly and the next 6sih hours were spent waiting in the ER.

Tuesday- 6.98 miles- 1.25 mile w/u, 8 x 600’s, 1 mile c/d.  Dude.   This was the first time using the workout feature on my Garmin; it worked pretty well.  With Monday night being so long and not getting to bed until 2 something, I told myself 2 things going into this run.  1-walk the recoveries and 2- listen to your body.   I knew I was overly tired and under fueled.   I didn’t want to just bail on the workout though.  I decided to try the warm up and 2 600’s with recoveries and see how I felt.  If I needed to drop the intervals and do easy miles, I would.  I was hoping that making the recoveries a walk would be enough to get me through it.   My plan calls for 600m repeats to be done between 3:26-3:35 but never having done 600m before, I had no idea what to expect.   I just tried to run by feel and be consistent.  The drawback to the workout feature is that it showed my current pace, I’d knew what overall time I had to hit but had never translated that to pace. Oops.   Actual repeat times– 3:17, 3:22, 3:15, 3:23, 3:20, 3:19,3:16, 3:21.  Holy crap, I did it!!  I felt pretty good when I was done but was tired so I skipped my last recovery and went straight to the cool down.   I might not have done that had I realized the watch would just stop at 6.98 miles!!!!  Grrr.

Wednesday- Rest day Pizza day- nuff said.  😜

Thursday- 7.25 miles- 1.25 mile w/u, 5 tempo miles, 1 mile c/d.   Oof, that was rough.   Nothing about this run ever felt good.  I ran this tempo on the streets and I looked forward to every stop light.    Built in breaks without having to feel guilty?  Hell yeah!    Outside of those, I never walked or took a break, so that is huge in itself.     I was glad to hit the cool down portion and even happier when that was done. I was so happy for cool down that it was almost faster than the tempo miles.  Oops.   A run-in with an off leash dog turned it into a walk and lowered the pace, which was probably better anyways.   😒  Tempo goal- 10:18.  Tempo miles- 10:03, 9:58, 10:04, 10:10, 10:07.  Pace wise, I did what I was supposed to do but it was just ugly.   It was also my first run with my Fitbit and one point it said my heart rate was 182.  What?!  I know that most runs will feel tired but this one just had me worried for the longer tempo runs that I know are coming all too soon.

Friday- Rest day.   Aww, bliss.  I indulged in some very yummy tri-tip, garlic bread and garlic green beans.  It was amazing.

Saturday- 8 miles   Misery.  I am intentionally keeping one of my weekend runs in the mid-late afternoon.    I need to work on building my heat tolerance back up.  I know that’s one of the things that hurt me at SLO- it was a very warm morning.    Saturday was only 76 but it kicked my ass.  I took more than a few walk breaks, a couple of stops and ran out of water.   Well hell, that’s not a good sign.    We’re not too far from constant triple digits here!   Oh well, I got in some hills.    To add to the pain, I realized that my training plan only called for 6 miles.   😓😂

Sunday- 10 miles  I got up early in an effort to beat the very high heat of 81.  Yes, that was sarcasm.  😏     This was rough, my pace was all over the place.  Some 10’s, some 11’s and some 12 minute miles.   It was warmer than I would have liked but like I said I have to get used to it.  I had more water than the day before but I dropped my bottle around mile 4 and broke the lid.  Seriously??  I had enough left to get me through the run but I had to carry the bottle in a certain way so I didn’t spill the rest.   I also knew that week’s mileage was catching up with me so I was fine with going slower.   When all was said and done, I was still closer to long run place than I thought I would be.

Weekly miles- 36.2 miles

It was a long, hard week but I completed every workout I set out to do.  I felt like throwing a little party when I finished my long run.   This was my highest mileage week ever– hell yeah!  Right now I feel ok, but I know I need to keep on foam rolling and stretching.    Moving on to this week, my mileage stays relatively the same but my intervals shift to 6x 800’s.  Yikes!!   I have a doctor’s appointment on Monday that could mess with my easy run though.  I thought about moving it to the morning but if I am still struggling with 8 AM runs, 4 AM is not going to happen.  😜  I really don’t want to miss my run so we will see.  I know consistency is going to be key to getting through this training cycle.   And a good dose of good luck.

I feel like there is something else I wanted to share but I can’t remember what it was.  Oops!

How was your weekend?

Do you run a last recovery or go straight to cool down?

How’s your weather?

 

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