Yes, it’s true! I’ve signed up for a FULL marathon. Am I crazy? Probably. Since I have not been great at posting I’ve decided to do a weekly recap instead of a post after each run. My marathon training officially started on Monday, but since I signed up on Friday I decided to start 2 days early.
Here’s what week 1 (plus the 2 extra days) looked like:
Saturday: 6 mile run – Since my watch was still broken I used map my run to find a 6 mile loop. I hit the 6 mile mark around 55 minutes and I didn’t believe that I could have possibly ran that far in that short amount of time, so I ran for 5 more minutes until I got to 1 hour. When I got home I mapped my route again and it said that it was 6.5 miles! I was pretty impressed with myself!
Sunday: 45 minutes on the elliptical – I wanted to lift some weights, but I didn’t have a ton of time because I was leaving for a work trip to Dallas. I decided that since I would be sitting on a plane for 4 hours I would be better off moving my legs than lifting weights.
Monday: Speed work – 4.5 miles – I bought a new watch on Sunday and this watch is much fancier than my old one. It times you for intervals, so I set it up to do a 10 minute warm up, then 6 intervals of 1 minute fast, 3 minutes slow, followed by a 10 minute cool down. The hotel had a “jogging path” which was really just a loop of a parking garage that had no cars parked in it. I headed out there before the sun was even up to get a run in. I warmed up at a 9:17 pace. I ended up doing 1 minute of sprints, 1 minute walking, 2 minutes jogging for my intervals. The pace of the sprint intervals were: 6:35, 7:07, 7:13, 6:45, 7:03, 6:57. Not too bad.
Tuesday: I tried to go to the hotel gym, but it was packed! I was able to hop on a bike for a little and to lift a little, but it was tough with so many people in the tiny gym. I ended up going back outside to the parking lot and did a little boot camp with squats, jumping jacks, crunches and leg lifts. Then I ran a mile in 9:02.
Wednesday: Tempo run – I headed to the parking lot again for a 6 mile tempo run, 2 miles easy, 2 miles tempo, 2 miles easy. My mile splits were: 10:06, 10:06, 9:22, 9:12, 9:50, 9:29. I know I should be happy with those splits, but I really need to work on slowing down if I want to be able to run 26.2 miles. I have definitely gotten faster, but it’s not sustainable over 26.2 miles. I would much rather run all 26 slower and run the whole thing, than to go out too fast and end up not being able to finish.
Thursday: Off. I needed to sleep in a little!
Friday: 8 mile run. I went back to the parking lot again, and like a hamster I went around, and around, and around!
My splits: 10:04, 10:22, 10:22, 10:17, 10:07, 9:56, 9:53, 9:07. I was happy with this run because I saved enough energy for the end to be able to run the last 4 miles faster than the first 4.
Saturday: Off. I went back up to Lehigh for the Lehigh/Laf football game. I did work out my liver though!
Sunday: Off. I wanted to get to the gym, but I didn’t end up getting home til much later than planned.
Total miles: 19.5
I’m off to Antigua bright and early tomorrow for Thanksgiving with the fam!
After this week I hope that I can get in more of a training routine since I will be traveling less. So far so good though!
–Melissa
You are amazing. Love the little hampster wheel.
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