Marathon Training: Week 2

Now that my second week has been completed, only 10 more weeks to go. Another great week as far as training goes. I can definitely tell that the intensity has been kicked up a notch with this new training plan. It is a good feeling and I love pushing myself in my workouts. The only thing that would make it better is if I had a training partner-any takers?

Monday: OFF. After work I did some light stretching followed by abs and my foam roller

Tuesday: SJ class at 6:00 am. Took Maisy out for a short run at about 9:00-9:20/mile pace for 2.25 miles. When I got back I did some stretching, abs & used my foam roller. I was already feeling a little sore from my SJ class. We did LOTS of legs and lunges always make me feel like someone took a bat to my quads and hamstrings.

Wednesday: Now this was a workout! I woke up not feeling tired, but feeling incredibly sore from the day before. My quads were just burning with soreness. I really dislike running on the treadmill, but it is too dark to run on the track or roads when I get up. Ideally, I like to get my run finished before work so that I don't have to do it after work when I am exhausted from my work day. Unfortunately, this means I get to run on the treadmill at 5:00 am. There might be some weeks I can switch to an afternoon run, but I already had stuff planned for after work so that I could get ready for my parents to be in town over the weekend.
I ran 1 mile for a warm up- it was very slow. I started to loosen up towards the end of the mile and once I was done ,I stretched for a good 10 minutes. My workout consisted of 2 x 1200 meters @ 4:33 with a 2 minute recovery and 4 x 800 @ 2:58 with a 2 minute recovery. This was an epic fail for me! I am not trying to be negative, but it sucked! Running on the treadmill made it even worse- I almost stopped mid workout because I was mentally rearranging my afternoon so that I could run this on the track. I didn't hit any of my target times according to the treadmill, BUT I was below what the pace should have been. This royally pissed me off because technically I should have been below on every repeat by at least 6-8 seconds. According to my pace calculate that I use on Runner's World my 1200s should have been at 6:06/mile pace and my 800s should have been at 5:58/mile pace. I ran below both of those targets, but never hit the initial goal time. I was trying to not let it bother me, but as you can tell it does bother me. After today I am going to make every attempt to run these outside and just use my garmin. I trust my garmin way more than a stupid treadmill. GRRRRRRR.

After completing some research due to my lack of real world attention after my workout I started to feel a bit more positive with what I found. According to the McMillan Running Calculator a long distance runner should be hitting these target times on speed workouts based on 3:15 marathon:

Speed Workouts
	Middle Distance Runners	Long Distance Runners
400m	1:26.1 to 1:29.8	1:27.8 to 1:32.9
800m	2:55.7 to 3:03.7	3:03.5 to 3:12.0
1000m	3:49.4 to 4:00.1	3:55.1 to 4:04.1
1200m	4:35.6 to 4:48.1	4:42.1 to 4:56.4
1600m	6:16.1 to 6:30.6	6:24.1 to 6:38.2
2000m	8:00.1 to 8:14.0	8:08.2 to 8:17.8

After seeing that chart, I suppose I can sleep at night. :-)

Thursday: SJ class at 6:00 am. I was so SORE when I woke up it was ridiculous. The pain from the lunges on Tuesday really set in and combined with my workout the day before I felt like a hot mess. It took a while to loosen up in class, but I noticed other people saying they were sore too so that made me feel better about my little situation.

Friday: Tempo day! Today was my first day using my Garmin foot pod so that I wouldn't have anymore frustrations with the treadmill. Garmin foot pod = amazing. My tempo was 7 miles with 1 mile easy, 5 miles at 7:00/mile and 1 mile easy. My average pace on the 5 miles was 6:55/mile. Not drastically below my target pace, but I was below it. The foot pod really helped me hit my times. The workout was a good, but not so great to my poor little heel! It hurt the whole workout, but of course I couldn't stop! I didn't realize it was bad until I was finished. Ouch! Note to self: remember to pack band aids in my gym bag. :-)

Saturday: OFF. Celebrated the day in Cheney with my family and some EAGS football.

Sunday: Long run day (17 miles). I like to get my run over first thing in the morning, but I had to take my hubby to the airport at 7:00 am and my parents were here. After I took Cam to the airport I came back and my parents and I went to Chaps for breakfast. I love their blueberry french toast- it is to die for! After breakfast I hung out with my parents before they had to leave. By this time I was getting tired from not having any rest from the previous week. My parents left around 11:30 and me and the girls went to snugggle. Ended up taking a much needed 2 hour nap. When I woke up around 2:00 pm the weather had obviously changed- it was windy and sprinkling. Definitely not the weather to put me in a good mood to go run 17 miles! I decided to buck up and get the run over with. My target pace Amy had me at was an 8:11/mile. I figured that this would be easy to obtain. I started off pretty slow because of the wind and then settled in a groove at about 8:00/mile. The first couple of miles I was actually having fun. Then about mile 5-6 I hated my life (pretty typical long run feeling) and once I hit mile 10 I was happy again. I ended up running 17.41 miles because I miscalculated my route home and was not walking .41 miles back to my house- much easier to just run it.  My overall time was 2:15:13 which equates to a 7:45 pace. Not too bad. I felt great after and I am not even sore. I am looking forward to seeing how I handle the 19 miles next week.

My three positive things from this week:

1. I wasn't sore from Sandpoint....does that mean I am in shape????

2. I can officially run inside on the treadmill with my new Garmin foot pod (amazing!!!!)

3. I killed my long run and it felt awesome!

Weekly Mileage: 32.16


--Tasha