I was a little bit nervous about week 6 because I figured my lucky of feeling pretty good during marathon training was probably due to wear off. I was also coming off a down week so I knew my legs were going to be in for a bit of a shock, but I just went into it with the focus of taking it one day at a time.
I moved my workouts to Tuesday and Thursday of the week so that I could allow Monday to let my legs get back into the swing of things after a down week and traveling back from DC. I was definitely riding the motivation from all those at the Marine Corps Marathon over the weekend!
Week 6: 10/23/2017-10/29/2017
Monday – 7.5 miles @ 9:05 pace
Tuesday – 12.10 tempo workout. 2 mile warm up, 8 mile tempo, and 2 mile cool down. (Splits: 7:11, 7:21, 7:18, 7:18, 7:24, 7:17, 7:16, 7:10).
Wednesday – 7.05 miles @ 8:54 pace
Thursday – 10.80 mile hill workout. 5 miles easy, 10 x 1 minute hills (jog back down), and 2.5 mile cool down.
Friday – Off
Saturday – 18.05 mile long run @ 8:04 pace.
Sunday – 7.05 miles @ 9:26 pace.
TOTAL: 62.55 miles
The highlights of this week hands down were my 8 mile tempo and my 18 mile long run. Both of these runs made me nervous, but I was able to mentally stay focused on the task at hand and execute like I wanted!
I try to do a straight tempo run every other week and the time had come to up the mileage again. 8 miles seemed like a long time to run at marathon pace (even though I know I have to run much more than that), but I knew if I focused on one mile at a time slowly but surely I’d get there. Instead of stressing about a specific pace I tried to run off effort and look at my watch just one time per mile. I kept a moderately hard effort and truly enjoyed every mile!
Saturday I had my 18 mile long run which was the longest run so far in this cycle. My in-laws were able to watch Easton so I got to run this one solo. I didn’t have a workout this week in my long run so it was just about going out and completing the miles. I kept my watch under my arm sleeves and simply focused on getting through each mile. I was honestly really surprised at the overall pace when I finished. I felt strong and smooth the whole run.
Going to continue to ride this training high as long as it will take me! Halfway through 6 weeks down and 6 weeks to go!