Marathon Training Week #2

• Tuesday: made up the 2 miles I missed on Sunday due to high temps making me decide to cut my long run short and ran 5 miles on the tready.  Felt really good the whole run and even bumped up the pace in the last ¼ mile.  My average pace for this run was 10:58.

• Wednesday: forced rest day as I worked overtime on the late night shift on Tuesday night.

• Thursday: I ran the 3 miles to the gym, did my strength training and then, I ran back home, but added an extra .2 to bring it to 3.2, making my running total for the day 6.2, or a 10K, thus earning me the Garmin Marathon’s 10K medal!  It’s so cute, it’s the Wizard’s hot air balloon and it says “10K” on the little basket that actually dangles from the balloon!  I felt really good on this split run.  The first 3 miles I ran at a 10:36 pace.  The second run of 3.2 miles, I ran almost a minute per mile slower, but I still felt really good.  It was much warmer out than it was for the first part of the run.

• Friday: another forced rest day due to working overtime on the late night shift Thursday night.

• Saturday: ran a fun Frida Kahlo-themed 5K at 7pm.  The temp was basically 100° (it was 97° with a “feels like” of 103°).  I wasn’t planning to run super fast and almost get a new PR simply because of when in the day and how hot it was when we were running, but I did.  I ran at a comfortably hard effort and felt strong the whole run.  There was also a brief “jog” to and from the car to drop off my sunglasses because I realized that I wouldn’t need them because the trail we were going to be running on was mostly shaded.  My official average pace for JUST the 5K was 8:47.  For the entire thing with the “jog” to and from the car, my average pace was 9:14 (yea, the “jog” wasn’t all that fast to and from the car as I wasn’t expecting my Garmin to die ¼ mile into the race so didn’t realize I’d be tracking everything ONLY on my FitBit…glad I have it as a backup, though).  On my drive home, I was all hyped up from the Free-da Run and wanted to run more, so when I stopped at Buc-ee’s on the way home, I ran 2 miles in the parking lot!  My pace for that 2 miles was 10:14.  Pretty decent pace for a visually boring run.  I guess I just really love running at night.  

• Sunday: wasn’t planning on running, but had that itch again, so when I went to the gym I ran 3 miles on the tready.  Mostly slower paced, somewhere around 10:54, but then the last ¼ mile, bumped it down to 10:00 minute miles.  Mostly because the itch was thus scratched and I just wanted to finish out the 3 miles.  My average overall pace was 10:59.  I did do a minute of walking to start, I think…on accident.

• Monday: LONG RUN DAY!!!  Since I was running that 5K on Saturday and knew I’d be running it hard, I decided to post pone my long run from Sunday to Monday because, hey, I’m on vacation, I can do what I want!  I wanted to do 9 or 10 miles and I also wanted to make sure I started earlier so that I didn’t have to cut it short again.  I did do 9, but only because I started later in the day than I really wanted to because I got some bad news right as soon as I woke up that kind of smacked some reality into me.  Anyway, this post is about my runs, I’ll get into what happened in another post.  Like I said, I started late, around 11:30am or so and was running until after 1pm.  It was in the mid 90°s, but the humidity was somewhat low and there was a breeze here and there.  For the most part, I felt pretty good, but did stop a few times to rest.  I hydrated as well as I could and supplemented my hydration pack with the occasional park water fountain (there aren’t many unfortunately).  I surprised myself with an 11:58 overall average.  I seriously thought it would be over 12:00 for my overall average.  Hooray for heat training!

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TRAINING NOTES FOR THIS WEEK:

I’ve decided I must be much better at hydrating than I was last summer and that’s a decent part of why the heat and humidity just isn’t really phasing me this year.  I know a good deal of it is because of my mindset.  Because you know what they say, the body achieves what the mind believes!  And if you believe hot and humid runs are going to suck, then guess what, they’re going to suck.  If you believe that you’re going to feel great despite the heat and humidity, then you’re going to feel great, or at least as close to great as is possible due to conditions.  And this year, I CHOOSE to feel great during my runs.  I CHOOSE to fully accept the deep and personal meaning that my favorite quote has for me: “we choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard.”  But, yea, I believe better hydration and upping my daily ounces of water earlier this year are playing a pretty decent part in how I’m able to cope better with the summer conditions here in Texas. 

I really impressed myself at the Free-da’s Run for the Arts 5K by running just 6 seconds slower than my current 5K PR.  That just really goes to show that all this running in the heat and humidity is making me a stronger runner.  When I set that previous PR, it was on a 100% flat course and in 52°, so much more conducive to running fast.  But, the difference is, at that race I weighed 179 and now I weigh 157.  22 pounds makes a huge difference.  Well, that and all the heat and speedwork (even though I’ve been bad and slacking on it lately) that I’ve been doing.  It’s all paying off.  I can really see myself running 4:20:00 or faster at the South Padre Island Marathon in November!!!

Also, since this isn't just generic marathon training and there's an actual goal race at the end of it, I decided I should make a fun header, so I hope you guys like it!  #runSPI