Ladies and gents, THE LAST LONG RUN IS DONE. Which mean–IT’S TAPER TIME!!! Ok, sorry for shouting, but I am SO excited to be heading into the last stage of training with just 19 days to go until the race. I’m definitely feeling a zillion times more prepared than I did last year at this point, so it’s extra gratifying to be dialing things down a little bit.
To back up, I started this week out pretty exhausted. I ran both the day before and the day after my half marathon, powered through a 13 hour workday on Monday, did a hard track workout Tuesday, and then absolutely crashed Tuesday afternoon. 
I think it was a combination of physical and mental exhaustion, but either way, I ended up leaving work early and taking a nap before reviving myself for class.
I have a fair amount on my plate right now (school, work, running, and wedding planning, to name a few) and this was a good reminder to give my body what it’s asking for. Which meant taking Wednesday off from running and hitting up a solid 90 minute yoga class.
Thursday morning I got my legs moving again to bump my mileage back up. I got a new GPS watch for my birthday and was definitely on the struggle bus trying to get it to work during this run–I apparently had it set to kilometers instead of miles. 
Oops! Now all is well and I can’t wait to play around with all of the features, the most important of which is that I don’t have to wait around for my old school Garmin Forerunner 10 to spend 5 minutes searching for satellites every morning. Huzzah.
Friday I got up far earlier than I am comfortable with (UGH) to do my marathon practice long run. Basically, I tried to mirror marathon day as much as possible in terms of what I ate, wore, carried, etc. I had my gluten-free plain bagel with peanut butter and banana and then packed up my gels and hand-held water bottle before meeting the girls for our 20 miler.
We had a fun, chatty run with some solid splits, and even managed a little surge at the end (last 4 miles were at 7:46, 7:50, 7:38, and 7:40). I definitely was hurting by the end of this run which is a little bit scary, since on race day I’ll still have 6.2 miles to go, but I know the atmosphere and the fact that I’ll be fully rested/tapered will make a huge difference. My tummy felt settled, I managed to stay pretty hydrated, and I didn’t have any major chafing/blister issues, so all systems are ready to roll!
After the run I quickly jetted to the office (zomg guys working after a long run is rough) and then to a fun family dinner before J and I hit the road on Saturday to head up to Burlington, VT for a music festival which turned out to be SUCH a blast! We saw Guster (my all-time favorite band), Grace Potter, Old Crow Medicine Show, and so many other awesome performances. Plus, I got to run and do yoga on Lake Champlain and also eat all of the amazing things. Burlington is a super fun town for a weekend away, although prepare yourself for 3.5 hours in the car each way. Compression socks FTW. Also, I highly recommend this podcast series on the Manson murders if you have a long car ride coming up–it’s fascinating.
Week 15:
- Tuesday: Track! Lotsa 200’s at mile pace–speedwork at 5:45 average
- Wednesday: 90 minute yoga and a much needed extra rest day
- Thursday: 5.5 miles
- Friday: Final 20 miler, 8:00 average pace
- Saturday: OFF
- Sunday: 3.3 mile shakeout, 60 minute yoga
One more gratuitous sunrise photo! Linking up with The Weekly Wrap, hosted by HoHo Runs and MissSippiPiddlin!
Whelp, another couple of weeks and another missed weekly recap–oh well! We had a couple of jam-packed weeks which included 2 weekends in Maine, my 29th birthday, the first week of fall classes, an absolutely nutty time at work, a half marathon, and a friend’s wedding. PHEW.
Other updates: I managed to squeeze a massage into my schedule and it was SO necessary! It really relieved some of the hip tightness I had felt creeping back in, and it felt amazing for my shoulders which had gotten crazy tight with the work and school stress. I also finally invested in a new pair of shoes. I decided to stick with my Asics and the news ones are feelin’ excellent so far.
Hello hello. Slightly belated greetings from the end of another 40 mile week–woot woot!! Despite a shorter long run this week, I was able to top out 40.5 miles total. I actually felt really strong on my 14 mile long run despite the longer mid-week miles, so I really hope to keep this up until I start cutting back for the taper in just a few short weeks. Also, hurrah for cooler morning weather! We definitely still had a few steamy mornings this past week, but things are looking grand on the running weather front 🙂
Week 12:
Guess who just ran her first 40+ mile week?? This gal!! I’m super pleased with how things went this week overall–I definitely met both my goals to run with friends and to increase my overall weekly mileage.
Week 11:
OH HAI! My recap is super duper not on schedule this week, but my head is still a little bit in the clouds with all of the wedding-y stuff so I’m going to keep blaming it on that for the time being. Either way, I’ve mostly been keeping up with my mileage despite the fact that Boston has been a freaking sauna for the last few weeks, so that’s a plus. I may shake up my schedule to post these weekly recaps on Sundays from here on out, mostly because it’s fun to revisit my long runs on my rest day. Also, Strava counts my weekly mileage totals from Monday-Sunday so that’s helpful.
This past weekend J and I were up at the cabin, where it was super duper humid but thankfully in the low 60s for my run on Saturday. As always, I struggled a bit with the lack of basically any flat terrain given the fact that I knew I had a fast finish long run on tap (aka each of the last 7 miles was supposed to be faster than the previous one). My splits weren’t quite as clean as I wanted them to be, mainly because I accidentally negatively split the entire run instead of just the end, but I’ll take it. J and I basically spent the rest of the weekend talking about wedding things and eating (#sorrynotsorry for all of the food pics, instafriends) and drinking mimosas. Not bad for a rainy-ish weekend!
Another week down, another weekend away! I spent last weekend down the Cape for a high school friend’s bachelorette. Despite the lack of sleep, I managed to sneak in a 14 miler along the course of 
The keys for me are keeping my Fridays easy, my Sundays empty, and lots of self care in between (aka yoga and massages!) I got my first massage of training this week at the new-to-me 
Has anyone else been singing 
As I discussed in my last couple of posts, this week started off with an extra rest day to 
My travel schedule has been pretty limiting here, but I’ve met some awesome ladies also training for Chicago at track (hi guys!) and am hoping to meet up with them for some upcoming runs. Also, my weekly mileage has worked out to be a little bit lower than I was planning. I’d like to incorporate a ‘longer’ mid-week run of 6+ miles, probably on Wednesdays or Thursdays. My hope would be to average around 40 miles/week–it’s all about learning to run on tired legs so that miles 20-26 of the marathon feel like a breeze 🙂 Lastly, I’d like to make sure I’m doing some tempo running once a week to incorporate speed beyond my track workouts.
Week 8:
So… this update has to start off with a little bit of less than awesome news. During my run on Wednesday I felt something funny tweak in my hip, and since then I’ve been dealing with some soreness in what I think is my TFL (tensor fasciae latae). I was supposed to run a local 5k today but I’m going to take today and tomorrow off in order to hopefully get things back in order in time for my long run this weekend. Here’s hoping ice, foam rolling, ibuprofen, and stretching will do the trick!!
In order news, I had a lovely and relaxing long weekend in Maine with my mom. Even though she lives down the street it’s always nice to get to spend some really good quality time together, complete with reading, lake swimming, and some late season strawberry picking. She even set an early alarm on Saturday to take a bike ride while I did my long run! Be sure to 
We arrived Friday to pick up our bibs at the expo, which wasn’t much to speak of but it was a good chance to get a sense of where the starting line was. After a delicious dinner at the original 
Given the amazing conditions and the fact that I was feeling strong, I figured I might as well shoot for the moon and give a PR a whirl, especially as the showers picked up and despite the hard effort I wasn’t hot or sweaty. I picked a couple of strong-looking folks to pace behind and held onto decent paces–and then started doing math in my head which led to me believe that a couple of fast final miles would lead me to PR. I dug deep and ran a 7:09 and a 7:03 for miles 12 and 13. 
Despite my watch saying differently, I clocked an official time of 1:40:29–two seconds slower than my PR, 12th in my age group and 45th woman overall. Not PR-ing was a little bit of a letdown, but this race felt relatively easy and I’m pleased to see that I was able to hold onto my time without my brother there as a pacer, like he was at the 
Greetings from another week of marathon training–I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! Jeremy was out of town hiking the last of the 48 4000+ ft. mountains in NH (and he did it–YAY J!) so I had a quiet start to the weekend with a solo 14 miler. It definitely was my best training run so far this season–everything really just clicked for me and I felt strong and happy the whole time. It helped that it was a gorgeous morning with temps in the 60s the whole run. I’m really loving running on the Boston marathon route, since it takes me out into my hometown and works a few hills into my training.
Shorter and Faster 