Holy crap it’s week 7 of marathon training. Where is the time going? I’ll get right into it because I have some announcements at the end of this post…

Monday: 4 miles

Tuesday: rest

Wednesday: 4 miles

Thursday: rest

Friday: 3 miles + 4 games of beach volleyball

Saturday: 14 miles in 2:16 (Personal Distance Record, at a faster pace than my first 1/2 marathon!)

Sunday: Yoga (14 miles + intense yoga class = I cannot feel my thighs right now)

Total: 25 miles

Reflections

Setting a PDR:

I cannot lie, I was a little freaked on Sat with the knowledge that I would be running further than I ever had before. I decided to adopt run/walk method, which you can read about below, and mapped out a path. I love running by the ocean. The scenery made the miles fly by. I mapped the run on “map my run” beforehand so I would have an idea of just how much ground I was covering. The path I traveled was winding as opposed to straight like I mapped it so I actually probably covered MORE than 14 miles. The run went really well, thank in large part I think to run/walk method. By the time I was about a mile from my house it hit me that I was setting a Personal Distance Record. My last mile was the fastest of all the miles I ran yesterday. Overall I felt better after than I had after all my other long training runs. I took an ice bath and beasted Jenna’s BBQ Chickpea pizza and face planted into bed. I was totally ravenous when I woke up and ate a bagel at 7:15 but my eating habits have been pretty normal which is good. I need to recoop my calories but I don’t want to binge eat. Overall, I felt great about this run!

Walk/Run Method:

I was kind of intimidated by my 14 mile run this weekend and after a lot of thought I decided to adopt run/walk method for my run. For my first run doing the method I decided on 10 mins run : 2 mins walk. I took 4 min walk breaks when I took in Gu and stopped my watch at stop lights. This method was a lifesaver. I used to think that there was no way that I could take walk breaks but honestly, they are saving my body. I finished last night and I had NO PAIN anywhere (ok my body was a little tight and I had blisters all over my feet) but no knee irritation or foot irritation. In addition, run/walk method helped break a really long run down into manageable portions. Running 14 miles seems like a lot but it seemed like less when broken down in 10 min increments. I used to worry about walk breaks but my motto for this marathon is “Billy Don’t be a Hero”. Doing a 26.2 race is HUGE. I don’t need to run every step of all 26.2 miles. In fact, I don’t want to run all 26.2 after the run/walk combo I did yesterday and as I proved in my last half, I don’t have to run the whole thing to set a 9 min PR. I know I will feel more confident going into Chicago with this plan in place.

Anddddd I signed up for another 1/2 marathon:

Whoops I did it again.

Source

This half is one of the few I could find reasonably near where I live in the end of August. I’ll be about 2/3 through my marathon training and so this will hopefully feel like a down week. Plus the race was super inexpensive and is a flat course on the ocean which means it will be cool. I really want to run sub 2 hrs. After yesterdays training run I feel like I have it in me but obviously a million things outside of my control can happen on race day so we’ll see.

Overall it was a great week of training. Next week the mid week runs get longer and my brother is visiting so I have to make sure I stick to my training plan. My brother wants to try yoga for the first time so at least I know I’ll get that in!