Marathon Training Week 12

This week was a bit of a mess, training-wise. Construction started on the house, we had record temperatures, and honestly, my motivation kind of dropped this week. I'm hoping to hit reset next week. It's the last tough week before the taper, and then I will apparently be running a marathon...

Monday: Cross Training. Does playing/swimming around in a friend's pool count? Because that's all I did on Monday. I also ate a lot, because that's what happens every time we go to their house.

Tuesday: 5 miles. Tuesday was the first day of construction on the house, it was also so hot that we broke records. I did not run. I did move a bunch of furniture out of the living room and tried to avoid going outside.

Wednesday: 5 miles. It was still really hot on Wednesday, and I was not organized enough to wake up early to run. Tom and I ended up doing a quick run in the evening up to the park near our house and back. It was still hot, but we figured it was better than nothing. 2.17 miles @ 9:20

Thursday: 5 miles. This run started out very whiny and grumpy. Right as I hit my halfway/turnaround point, it started absolutely pouring. I love running in the rain, and the second half of my run was not only much happier, it was much faster too! 5.04 miles @ 8:54

Friday: Rest day. I debated adding a run on Friday to make up for the rest of the week, but I knew I had a half on Sunday, so I ended up just taking the rest day.

Saturday: 8 miles. Holy procrastination, I did not want to run. At. All. I put this run off for way too long, and decided to cut it a little short so I didn't go into my half on completely exhausted legs. And ok, I also wanted to be done by noon because I had college football to watch. Priorities. I hated everything about this run, and felt like I was running through water. 5.03 @ 9:36

Sunday: 12 miles. I honestly don't even feel strongly enough to write a full recap about this race. I ran the Putnam County Fall Classic this morning. It's a little small-town race (so small there were only 4 porta-potties!), but it was really well organized, and one of the only races I've run lately that started on time. The course was really pretty, but a lot hillier than I expected it to be.

I started out feeling pretty good. I was cruising along, not even really pushing and knocking out miles between 8:26 and 9:08 pace until around mile 7. The sun came out and I hit a serious hill. I may as well have been running in sand. Everything felt hard, and my right hip started hurting. I walked through water stations, and up some hills. I make it sound really awful, and it felt pretty awful, but my slowest mile was only 10:39, so it's not like I was really dragging.

I managed a bit of a sprint at the end because a woman decided to try to pass me on the last downhill, and I was not in the mood to be passed. She didn't pass me.

I was really mad/disappointed after I finished, but I think a lot of it was the weather. My heart rate was really high the entire race, so I think the heat/humidity hurt me more than I realized at the time. Now it's time to get back into training mode for my last pre-taper week.

13.1 miles @ 9:29

Miles this week: 25.34