changing it up a bit....

I had 6 miles of hills at marathon pace on my schedule but sometimes it's fun to change things up a bit at the last minute.

I left work a little early yesterday, fed the cat, did P90X ab ripper, started some laundry, & then met up with David D. & Jayson L. Something told me we would end up running more than 6 and that was perfectly ok. On my "2 a day Wednesdays" I usually ended up with 9-11 miles total for the day anyway. It's been a while since I've run that much on a Wednesday. Even though it'll put my mileage up a little more than I had planned for the week, it was totally doable since we started about 4:40pm when we still had daylight. It started raining a little just as we started which sucked but that's just the way the last week has been around here. I can't imagine running in weather like this all the time in Seattle.

Warm + Rain = Ok, I can do it…….Cold + Rain = just sucks!

If I had a hilly marathon there's no way I could hold this pace much past mile 16 or 17. Thank God, New Orleans is flat as a pancake. On the down hills, of course, I always make up time but doing this sort of course for 26.2 would kill my IT Band/Hip. I think I'll keep all my tempo runs that I do the rest of this training cycle as flat as I can get them just to be safe. Doing marathon pace on hills for this amount of time is ok but not sure I'll try to do it every single week. Like I said, sometimes it's good to mix things up a bit.

9:09 miles-8:49 pace-1:20:11

Mile 1: 8:55
Mile 2: 9:00
Mile 3: 8:32
Mile 4: 8:33
Mile 5: 8:26
Mile 6: 8:33
Mile 7: 8:56
Mile 8: 8:53 (David left us for the faster John P. & more miles)
Mile 9: 9:29 (heading to the town hall)
Mile .09: 10:29 (jogging to the door)

I went inside & stretched. I took off with the group intending to do another 3-4 slow miles but my body cooled down, my hands felt like they were starting to freeze in my brooks gloves, & my legs had that heavy feeling in them. I did 2 miles at a 10:06 pace & called it a night after I stuffed myself with grilled chicken from Uncle Buds. I think the 7 miles on the death mill the day before & my rainy/muddy 20 miler caught up with me this week. During marathon training I feel like there's a point in time where you really start to crave sleep & I think I'm there. This is the first time in this training cycle that I've really felt my legs get "heavy". 

 

11:09 miles for a Wednesday...I'll take it!

My weekly totals since the last week of November....

Last week of Nov: 36.74
1st week of Dec: 37.1
2nd week of Dec: 37.32
3rd week of Dec: 42.08
4th week of Dec: 45.55
1st week of Jan: 37.62
2nd week of Jan: 46.08
3rd week of Jan: 41.09 (provided I get 3 in today, 15 in Saturday, & an easy 5 on Sunday)

I'm definitely getting in higher mileaged weeks right now versus Pre-Chicago.  I told the guys last night that I'm ready for January to end & the first week in February to fly by.  I'll be ready for taper for sure.