Marathon Training Weeks 18-20
The last few weeks I haven't stuck with my training schedule as well as I should...but I did manage to pull it out at the end. :-) In a nutshell:
Week 18: 11 miles + strength training
Week 19: 9 miles (ran 6 that Saturday from Louisville, KY to Indiana via 2nd St bridge)
Week 20: 17.5 miles
Last Thursday, I went to the running store to pick up a new pair of shoes, and the woman who helped me invited me back for a fun run that evening. It was pretty cool--not too far (3.5 miles) and there was pizza and beer at the end. :-) One of the ladies in my pace group and I chatted the whole time, and she turns out to be an ultra runner (ie, she runs marathons to train for her races--50 or 100 miles). I asked her if she'd run with me on Saturday, since I was supposed to run 13 miles (0.1 shy of the length of a 1/2 marathon) because I'd been slacking and wasn't sure I could push myself to do all of it. She agreed, and we had a great time running on Saturday! We finished in 2.5 hours, and her point to me was that "if today was Disney, you'd be halfway there AND you could walk the rest of it and still finish in time." That really helped motivate me.
I can tell you that the slacking caught up with me, because I was pretty wiped out after that 13 miles. I am recommitting to running closer to my training schedule this week--my long run is "only" 10 miles and the total mileage is 24 for the week. Since I only ran 17.5 last week, I may pull the mileage down to 20 by cutting a run in half and doing 3.5, 3.5, and 3 for the other runs. However, next week is supposed to be 29 miles....I think I'll call in the experts on this one and post to the runners community.
Week 18: 11 miles + strength training
Week 19: 9 miles (ran 6 that Saturday from Louisville, KY to Indiana via 2nd St bridge)
Week 20: 17.5 miles
Last Thursday, I went to the running store to pick up a new pair of shoes, and the woman who helped me invited me back for a fun run that evening. It was pretty cool--not too far (3.5 miles) and there was pizza and beer at the end. :-) One of the ladies in my pace group and I chatted the whole time, and she turns out to be an ultra runner (ie, she runs marathons to train for her races--50 or 100 miles). I asked her if she'd run with me on Saturday, since I was supposed to run 13 miles (0.1 shy of the length of a 1/2 marathon) because I'd been slacking and wasn't sure I could push myself to do all of it. She agreed, and we had a great time running on Saturday! We finished in 2.5 hours, and her point to me was that "if today was Disney, you'd be halfway there AND you could walk the rest of it and still finish in time." That really helped motivate me.
I can tell you that the slacking caught up with me, because I was pretty wiped out after that 13 miles. I am recommitting to running closer to my training schedule this week--my long run is "only" 10 miles and the total mileage is 24 for the week. Since I only ran 17.5 last week, I may pull the mileage down to 20 by cutting a run in half and doing 3.5, 3.5, and 3 for the other runs. However, next week is supposed to be 29 miles....I think I'll call in the experts on this one and post to the runners community.