96 Days

Happy Monday Everyone, Welcome to week 5!

Something crazy that I realized today when calendar arranging is that there are only 96 days left until the marathon, that's like 3 months, not so far away when you are looking at less than 100 days!!! I have been working over the weekend to put together our calendar for the fall. I am one of those nerds that is obsessed with building calendars and schedules (in case you hadn't noticed already) and we have a lot we are trying to squeeze into the September -December months.


So today, first day of week 5 marks my first cut-back week. I spent the last 4 weeks on a gradual mileage build-up, mostly getting used to the schedule and building my long runs back up, this week will be a very slight cut-back (only my long-run has been cut) and next week I jump into some new territory- weekly mileage in the 40s and each long run will start to become a new distance record for me (14miles is the farthest I have run). I am really excited to break into the uncharted waters, I think it will help make the whole training thing seem more real. I have also been updating my pace expectations for many of my runs, I hit a point this weekend where I think it needs to be adjusted.


Well Today is Monday, and rather than do the progression run that was on the schedule, I decided to do the tempo that got messed up last week. I find tempos more effective anyways because I feel like all my easy runs accidently turn into progressions anyways. So 6 mile tempo, with 3 miles at 8:35, and rather than making it an even warm-up and cool down, I did 1 mile warm-up and 2 mile cool-down since I seemed to struggle with the cool-down last week after my track workout, figured I better become an expert at running when tired.

6 miles- 53:49, avg pace 8:58
Mile 1-  9:30
Mile 2-  8:34
Mile 3-  8:31
Mile 4-  8:25
Mile 5-  9:20
Mile 6-  9:29

I was really happy with this run, like REALLY happy! The tempo miles felt great, not too challenging, just enough, and I could have pushed more on the cool-down, but I just let it be. This is one place where I have made adjustments to my goal paces from here on out, I am really hoping that pushing myself during these tempos will result in faster times everywhere.