Wk 1 recap {marathon training}

Marathon Training Week 1 is done!

I plan to share a weekly recap each Monday morning so you can all follow along. Whether you are a seasoned marathoner, training for your first, or just curious, please join! I love your advice and encouragement as I get ready for the Chicago Marathon in October. I promise to be completely honest about each week and share my pace and mileage. You won't get any fake-happy posts about how I love running, because we all know training in the summer is not all rainbows and happy faces. It can be a little rough. I'll be honest and you will be kind and not judge, okay?

This week I ran a total of 24 miles. This is pretty light for a training week, but I appreciate the gentle start. Here is what it looked like:

M: (cross training) Yoga and walking
T: 3 miles at a 9:19 pace
W: 5 miles at a 9:22 pace
Th: 2 miles at a 9:00 pace
F: rest
Sat: (pace) 5 miles, 4 at a 8:30 pace, half mile warm up, half mile cool down
Sun: (long run) 8 miles of hills at a 10:00 pace.

Monday is my cross training day and I was kind of half-hearted about it. I did a home yoga session and lots of stretching. Eventually I would like to do more strength work, but I didn't on Monday. Why? Probably because I was feeling lazy and just wanted to play in the kitchen.

Tuesday and Thursday I ran outside. Thursday's run got rained out. Seriously. Like a flash flood and lightening storm. I had to run into CVS to hide. The nice guy at the counter gave me a plastic bag to put my keys in because I was worried about soaking my apartment clicker.

Wednesday was a good treadmill session. I felt really strong, even though I didn't finish until 8pm.

Saturday was a pace run. AR and I discussed it and decided we would warm up and cool down for a half mile each. I am only running at an 8:30 pace because that is about my goal pace for race day. In previous training plans, I've pushed my pace more, but I think that has hurt me during training. Lets me realistic: I am not running a marathon at a 7:40 pace. We went out pretty hard on Friday night, but we made it through the run just fine. On Saturday afternoon, we walked around a local festival and enjoyed some froyo :)

Sunday was 8 miles and we picked the hilliest route we know. I did bring a water bottle - when it gets this hot, I don't like to risk it. Once stretch of hills was nearly the death of me... I was running so slowly, it was embarrassing. The pace was a bit slower than I like, but anything between 9:30-10:00 is really fine for me on long runs. Hal Higdon suggests doing long runs 60-90 seconds slower than your goal pace, which means we are right on track.

Reflection: Over all, I feel this training will be really good. I know these back-to-back weekend runs are going to be rough. For one thing, waking up and running before it gets to hot on Saturday AND Sunday puts a real cramp on my weekend style. I think we may do some pace runs on the treadmill on Saturdays so we can go later in the day. Then again, I don't want to run late on Saturday and early on Sunday.
I want to be committed to staying on pace Saturdays and then going slow on Sundays. This week was fine, I just need to maintain that. I have a tendency to push too much on long runs and then hurt myself for runs in the next few days. All in all, I am pleased with the week :)

Week 1 is in the books! How were your runs this week?

x0x0, 

Hannah