Week 5

This week we were on our Kauai trip, so the focus was not on training which was actually really nice. I didn’t do a workout and instead just enjoyed my couple runs on the island and when we got home, I did a couple slow easy runs on tired legs. I can’t wait to run the NYC Marathon and I hope to run a PR, but the reality is that there are other elements of my life that are a lot more important than running, so training is naturally not always going to be super intense- especially while on a family vacation.

Mileage: 24 miles! I was so tired after a day of travel on Friday and was pushing the stroller that I did one less mile. A super low week, but maintained fitness and it was a good time to let my body absorb the training I’ve done so far.

No workouts!

Cross-Training: I didn’t step into the hotel gym once! My “cross-training” this week was hiking in Kauai.

Long Run: 10 miles back in PV. This was a couple days after our trip. I realized running on this beautiful, sunny Saturday that we also live in a pretty beautiful place!

Week 6

For some reason this week I had doubts creep in that I’m not doing “enough” to run the type of marathon time I hope to run. I talked it through with Lance and he reminded me that last time I trained for a marathon we had one less kid. Life is even more full than that training cycle and my lower mileage reflects that. I need to trust the training Lance is putting together and once again remember: less sometimes truly is more.

Mileage: 30 miles still spread across 4 days

Workout: Hit the track. I tried to get out of doing a track workout, but Lance insisted that it was the right move and he was right. I did 2 miles of warm-up, 16 laps alternating 100 meters hard and easy, 2 miles cool down. This converted to 4 miles (6:21, 6:26, 6:48, 6:49). This shows me that I need to build a bit endurance to hold pace- I slowed down last 2 miles. This was great because it was a good pace-changing workout and even though I was switching between hard and easy efforts, I still ran a faster overall pace than my 4-mile tempo a couple weeks ago. This is a great, simple workout. I was able to just shut my brain off and get into the flow of jogging the curves and sprinting the straight aways.

Long Run: 12 miles. I had to squeeze my long run in on a Friday morning. It felt overall pretty good, but last mile felt rough. Body needs to get used to more mileage.

Exactly 12 weeks out from the NYC Marathon. Here’s to training smart these next few weeks and believing that I am doing the perfect training for my season of life AND it is enough to run the fastest one yet!