Marathon Training: Week 8

Sorry for the late post everybody! It's been quite a week.

Leslie and I went to North Carolina to visit my grandmother for Labor Day, so it has been tough to get back and post. However, unlike not sticking to my blogging schedule, I did stick to my running schedule this week.

To recap, I had a 3-6-3 last week. And a whopping 13 miles on Saturday. If you remember, week before last, I had decided to move my Tuesday run to Monday to help avoid the dreaded shin pain later in the week. It worked out well, and I wanted to do this again this week, but I was starting to come down with a cold and felt tired on Monday, so I pushed the run back to Tuesday. On Tuesday, I still wasn't feeling great, but I decided to walk my neighborhood and just see how I felt. I noticed after walking a half-mile, that my heart rate wasn't any higher than normal so I decided to run a mile and see how things went. First mile was good, so I completed the 3 mile run. Didn't set any records, but another training run down.

Wednesday I felt mostly the same, so I decided I was going to brave the 6 miler. It was a little easier to get motivated because my neighbor wanted to join me for the run. After completing the 6 miles, I was more worried about my shins than I was my cold. So I guess that meant my health was ok.

Not wanting to overdo it, I did take Thursday off and packed for my trip to North Carolina.

Saturday was quite a big day since it was my first long run by myself (away from my running group) AND it was in the NC mountains AND I still had the remnants of my cold. I thought it would be neat to run to Virginia and back to say that I had run across a state line. I didn't take into account how freaking hilly this stupid idea was. The first 4 miles were brutal. But I stuck with it. After crossing the Virginia line, the rest of my run was remarkably normal and I felt great. Miles 5-9 were a breeze. Given the difficulty of the course I began to fatigue a little and by mile 13 I was running on will power alone. However, I did finish and I am very proud of myself. I essentially ran a mountainous half marathon carrying my own water along the way. Though the perk of running home to grandma's house is that you get ham biscuits, eggs and grits when you get there.

The week ended with a simple 5 mile walk as cross training, and now it's off to focusing on next week. Next week will be a step-back week for me, so I will run a 3-7-4 and a 10 miler on Saturday. I will try not to bore you and provide an equipment update for you next week in addition to my blog post, so stay tuned.