Chicago Training: Week 5

Sunday
Rest (aka birthday celebrathon hangover nursing day)



Monday
Distance - 4 miles
Pace - 9:40

Another one of those days where you spend a whole day trying to talk yourself into running, but you spend more time actually negotiating with yourself than doing anything.  When I finally jumped ship off the couch, it was 8 pm, and all I want to get in was a 'quickie.'  To LA Fitness (because the AC upstairs is broken, and my guest room with treadmill is temporarily an oven).  Pace was sub 9:40, but it was a brick oven on the 2nd floor of LA F too, so for sure not easy.

Tuesday 
Rest (aka rut-roh)

Missed a call from Michele.  Decided to do 10kTuesday on the treadmill.  Then decided to bail on that and just sit on the couch with hubby all night.  This whole no-kids-thing could be doing wonders for my training  .. but so far, its just made me want to enjoy what I never get to enjoy .. being a slouch!

Wednesday
Distance - 1 mi WU, 5 x 1000 with 400 m recovery, 1 mi CD + 11 laps
Goal: 5:09



Tough!  Tough, tough, tough.  I am going to blame going out too fast. And new sneakers. And the heat fest that is 6:30 pm on an open track these days.  But the goal was 5:09, and I hit it 3 times.  Once I was off goal by 30+ seconds (needed a: just recover interval) and the other by 4s.  My first one, though, was 4:55, so yea, a little fast in the heat, and I was spent.  Next time, must pace that out a bit better, so that I can hang for the full work out.

This is the second time I have almost burst into tears thinking about the marathon after a run.  Being THAT drained and exhausted, and having 20 more miles to do.  After our 14.5 last Saturday was the first time .. to think that we'd been literally running ALL MORNING LONG, and STILL had the WHOLE Atlanta 10 Miler to go .. the very thought makes the "d" word jump to my tongue every time.  (deferment, you perverts!)

In other news, though, WEIGHT LOSS IS COMING!! :) I am maintaining under 140s.  For the longest time, it had been: 139. 139, 142, 139, 141, 143.  Now its more like: 137, 138, 138, 137, 137.  Boom!  Buh Bye, "4" tens digit, officially!!  Counting re-lost and found weight, that's -5 since I started marathon training.  WooooOOOOOOoooo.

I'm still giving a lot credit to eating better and swimming for the break in the plateau.  Different muscles, and even after I am EXHAUSTED with intervals, I can still easily talk myself into jumping in the pool.  Its never an easy workout, per se, but the perks:  cooling off, hot tubbing, relaxing and feeling cleaned off ... all make the brain say: yea sure, lets do it.

Thursday
Distance - 3.1

A little Publix with the returning champ, Mr. K-man, tonight.  A shake out run for him.
Here is where I can see two paths diverging.  A couple of people so far have told me that maybe racing isn't a good idea during marathon training.  But lets get real .. I'm not putting off racing for 22+ weeks.  Just not going to happen.  Plus, I think speed and race pace running need to be a part of marathon training, or I will just get slow!  That said, I can now see the conflict.  Total distance for the week is tanking .. some of that due to the fact that my "week" starts Sunday, and this time, we ran long Saturday, but still ..   I could go long today, and add more miles to Friday, without totally messing up the Sunday long run, and have a more decent total for the week.  BUT .. Braves 5k.  I don't want to tack on the miles I missed earlier in the week now because I need rested legs to run this 5K.  Right now, I don't think its going to ruin me, but closer to full on training (say with 18 weeks to go), I'm going to have to let marathon training win more and more of these arguments.

And speaking of which, its 6/9 .. so OFFICIALLY 4 MORE MONTHS!!!  Panic Mode: ON!!!


Saturday
See race weekend post. :)

Total - 21