Marathon Training Week 6 Recap

     Another week is in the books and no real issues have come up yet.  One thing I am noticing though is when I get up in the mornings and head out for my run, my legs always feel sore and tired kinda like I am wearing cement shoes.  The weird thing is even though they feel this way I am still hitting my desired pace or faster.  Maybe I need to do a better job of stretching and rolling my muscles out to alleviate this feeling.

     Knocking on wood, I haven't had any real major injury issues to deal with, and all my training runs have gone pretty well.    Wednesday was pretty exciting to me, being able to complete so many miles in one run really effected me emotionally, as I though it might.  I made a nutritional change for my long run, introducing a Clif brand crunchy granola bar into the mix.

     It is hard to pick which run was may favorite for the week, but if I was forced to do it I would have to pick Friday's.  Just the fact that I ran my fastest mile ever on a flat surface on the last mile of a run made me feel like I am really making some progress.

Sunday:

     Sleep is what I needed and Mandy new it.  She asked me if I was going to run in the morning or after work, which is not normal because she knows I run in the morning.  I took the opportunity to sleep in so I could allow my body to rest.  The down side to that decision was instead of running when it was cool with mild humidity now means I had to run when it was warm and sticky out.  When I got home from work, I got changed and headed out.  There was a little breeze that was nice, but there was one stretch of road with tall corn fields on both sides blocking the wind that was the worst part of it.  It made the situation very sticky with stagnate air, it felt like I was running in a sauna.  I decided to take a slightly different route and at one point I had to stop and look at my gps on my phone to see if I missed my turn. The last mile or so was a little better because I was on the bike path with a canopy of trees providing some shade.  I had to show this when I uploaded my watch data.  my pace and my cadence was rock solid steady.
 

     I have been doing some pushups to help build up my upper body strength, but I haven't been logging them to know exactly which days I did them and how many.  I figured, hell I am writing a weekly recap of my training so I might as well add them too.
     - 3 sets of 10 pushups

Monday:

    Nothing to note today other than today was an off day from running.

Tuesday:

     Felt pretty darn good on this run despite how muggy it was.  Lately I've noticed on almost every run my body wants to go faster than my scheduled pace and today was no exception.  I think it shows the work i have been putting in and that I am getting in better shape.  I will continue to let my pace quicken but I don't want to let it get to out of hand.  I figure five seconds or so won't sabotage my training and cause me to over train, but I also want to let my body do what it wants to.

Wednesday:

      This summer has been pretty nice weather for a lot of things especially running and today was no exception.  A very comfortable 60 degrees and low humidity, I couldn't have asked for a better morning to head out for my longest run yet.  Today is my last long run before I hit my first 20 miler.  Now that seems a little dramatic considering today was a 19 mile run and next week it is only one more mile.  

      My goal today was just to keep my pace under the 10 minute mark for every mile.  I headed out and for some reason I felt so good I couldn't get my pace to slow down.  I practically had to slow to a walk to get my pace to settle down.  Once I got past my first three miles I was able to get the my pace a little more to where I wanted it to be.  I was looking to keep it between 9:45 and 9:55 per mile even though my pace bounced around a little bit, I was very pleased with it.

     I went for a little change in scenery so I mapped out a route that would take me east for the major part of the run and then head back to familiar territory.  The reason I bring it up is because on this section of the bike path there was a lot of tree coverage and I have noticed when I am in these type of sections my gps gets a little funny and even though I don't feel like my pace is slowing, my pace on the watch always slows down.  That is when I hit the 9:50s for the first time, the other was when I had a 3 mile section of direct head wind.  The road I was running had tall corn on both sides and and it created a tunnel effect with the breeze and made a light wind quite a bit stronger.

     I had a slight change with my nutrition plan for my run today.  During my 17 mile long run I notice I was getting pretty hungry and the Clif chews were not enough so this time I added pair of Clif brand crunchy peanut butter granola bars.  I ate the first one at mile 8 and the second at mile 16.  It seemed to help, I didn't notice any hunger pains this time and I didn't have any GI issues either.  I am thinking one bar per hour would be good, so I will continue to test this and see how it goes.

     I can tell you this run really effected me today.  There was a certain point where I felt so perfect, you know, those times when you have that perfect song playing at just the right time and everything seems to be going just right.   I had this moment where all I could think about was how far I had come from that guy that just 2 years ago, at that very moment would have been sitting on his fat ass watching a movie and eating his life away with junk food.  I just started thinking about how far I have come and realizing that I am capable of extraordinary things.  No one can show you this or make you feel this, it is something only you can find when you look inside yourself and make the choice to change. 

Thursday:
     Today is Mandy's birthday and since we celebrated yesterday we decided to just have a quiet evening at home.  We cooked a couple of nice steaks on the grill and continued watching the past sons of anarchy seasons.

Friday:

     Man it was freakin' COLD!  For some stupid ass reason I thought I would warm up once I got going so I didn't wear any long sleeves, hats or gloves.  I dealt with the cold pretty well, but my hands were very, very cold.  My first mile was at the slower end of my pace range for this run, but once my legs loosened up and the pace really increased with an almost 30 second swing.  As the miles clicked by my pace slowed down a bit, nothing I would be concerned about.  When my watch buzzed and signaled that I was in mile 6 I just said to screw it I wanted to see how fast I could go on my last mile.  To my obvious surprise I ran my fastest mile ever, this time without the help of a steep Sothern California hill.
     - 3 sets of 10 pushups

Saturday:

          I had the urge to sleep it in today, which I know may seem like I am being lazy, but I figure as long as I still get my run in then I'm not being to lazy :) This was an easy pace run, but my easy pace has gotten faster as of late so today's run was right around the 9:30 mark instead of the 9:45s I had originally mapped out for myself.  I kept the route simple this time and just did an out and back on the bike trail.  It was pretty warm out sitting at 81 degrees, the low humidity helped quite a bit. 

Week 7 begins now

* For quick access to my entire Marathon training journal click the "Marathon Journal" tab just below the Running In The Fat Lane header