Marathon training week 3

Training for Twin Cities Marathon, October 9:

Monday: 6 miles easy

Tuesday: 4 mils total warm up and cool down. Workout was a ladder, which is probably the most interesting workout I'll do with Hanson's - their track workouts are mostly repeats of the same distance, like 12x40 etc. So this was a nice change. 400 (1:32), 800 (3:11), 1200 (4:44), 1600 (6:30), 1200 (4:48), 800 (3:12), 400 (1:32). With 400 jog between each. I didn't hate it, and I was close to the right pace most of the time. It was a trillion degrees.

Wednesday: Morning rest, but in the evening I went to the New Orleans Track Club 2 mile summer series. That got me about 4 miles, including warm up and cool down (ha, as if I needed a warm-up). The short distance of the race made me feel like it was ok to sub it for a rest day, and to continue my regular schedule, which included a tempo ten hours later. 

Thursday: Total close to 11 miles, including a 7 mile tempo. Despite the heat, I managed to limit it to one real "break" at mile 6.15 (seriously, why?). I did have another shoelace untie at mile 3.5, but I retied it quickly. I don't know what it is about the Kinvara laces, but mine always come untied. This never happens with other shoes. My Kinvara laces even came undone in my PR marathon, and I had to stop and tie them - restarting was so miserable. I think I'm going to save my laces from the next pair of non-Kinvara shoes I get rid of and switch the laces out. Anyway, this tempo felt much better, so I think I am getting a little better at them. Pace 7:12 for the tempo portion.

Friday: 8 miles easy. These day-after-tempo runs are SO slow. My "easy" paces for Hanson's should be 8:40 - 8:59ish on recovery days, and I actually don't even know if I'm hitting that. I feel like I'm crawling.

Saturday: 14 miles with 15 hill repeats. I actually skipped my favorite hill out on the levee because I just didn't think I could run 1.5 miles out to the hill, 1.5 miles on the hill, and 1.5 miles back with no shade at all. It was probably close to 100 degrees on the levee, as it's totally exposed and the asphalt absorbs heat from the sun. The heat index was already 100 when I checked the weather at 7 am, so...kind of a warm run. Hanson's has long run paces that are more like a moderate pace than easy, and the range is broad. I've been in the 7:40's to 7:50's, all within range, so far. This run was 7:48, but it felt harder than last week, the high mileage this week plus the heat must be getting to me! 

Sunday: 7 miles easy on dirt track. Except it didn't feel easy. It felt very hard to run about 9 minute miles. Once again, we got an oddly cool day (the low was 77!) on a day when I didn't need it. Can I please get a cool day for my long run?

Total: 60 miles - probably one of my highest mileage weeks ever. But that's partly due to running on my rest day, which I did in preparation for a potential switch of rest days. I think I am going to switch to a Monday day off. This will allow me to run the day before my tempos, which felt better this week. However, it means that I don't run the day before track, so that might just change which day is more of a struggle!

I slipped on my strength work this week, mostly because of some early work mornings and evening events. But I am going to get back to it this week: I can feel a difference already. My muscles are fatigued and my hips are a little stiff. I think strength and weights make a big difference in level of muscle fatigue, which in turn impacts how much of the workload my joints take on. So next week, back to real, legitimate strength every single day.