Week 2 Training & Race Week

Posted on Apr 10, 2010 under Training | 2 Comments

This is the first (of 3) weeks where I have to modify my Sunday long run and run during my off days to make up for it. I have a 5K tomorrow, which I’m definitely underestimating. Ever since I ran the half marathon, I feel like any race shorter than that distance is easy, which is totally not the case. Shorter races involve a lot more speed and you have to strategize about how much speed to use at what time. For all of my past 5Ks, I have started off too fast, which just tired me out for the rest of the race (you’d think I learned after the first time..). What I liked about the half marathon is that running that fast so soon at the beginning of a 13.1 mile race is literally suicide. So when I held back the first couple of miles of my half, I was surprised (and happy) to see how much more energy I still had even after running so many miles already. I finally got the concept of pacing, too bad it took me over a year of racing to finally understand.. 🙂

Anyways, back to marathon training. I was supposed to run 14 miles for my long run, but will only do 3.1 that day (+ any extra miles I run during my warmup/cooldown). So I decided to break down the other 11 miles throughout the week on my off days. After these crazy 3 weeks, I am definitely going back to the training plan and taking those days off, or cross training. I have been so exhausted (sleeping through alarm clocks and everything!) the past 2 weeks, I know it’s from running all these miles.

I mentioned on DailyMile how much I am enjoying running longer distances (at slower paces, but I’m ok with it). It just feels good to be able to run such a long distance, consistently too. We’ll just see what I have to say once I get up to those 20 mile runs. I may be back to complaining about running long distances after that. The splits for Tuesday’s easy 8 miles ranged from 7:56-8:18, with each mile only 5-10 seconds apart. I made sure that I didn’t run too fast, but not lose focus and slow down too much. It appears it was the right balance. Thursday’s speed workout was faster than expected. I was supposed to run 2 1-mile intervals at 6:13 pace. I can usually run that at the end of a workout so I didn’t really think it would be too hard. I got a little too ambitious and ran my fastest mile in months (or years) at 5:37 and was able to slow down to a 5:45 for the 2nd one. I really need to focus on running at the paces the program is asking. The chances of burning out will increase if I go too far above and beyond these first couple of weeks. I keep forgetting that there are 8 more weeks to this program 🙂

Monday: 4 mi, 33:44, 8:26 min/mile
Tuesday: 9 mi easy: 1:12, 8:00 min/mile
Wednesday: 4 mi, 35:30, 8:52 min/mile
Thursday: 7 mi, 53:53, 2 1-mile intervals: 5:37, 5:45
Friday: 8 mi easy/recovery, 1:05, 8:07 min/mile
Saturday: 4 mi, 37:55, 9:28 min/mile
Sunday: 5K (see future post)

Total Miles: 39.1 miles
Avg HR: 147 bpm
Total Calories: 4,224 calories
Total Pushups: 555 pushups








2 Responses to “Week 2 Training & Race Week”

  1. lindsay Says:

    hope the 5k went well! you could also consider doing a 2nd run later in the day on short-race days like that to make up the rest of your mileage, just an option.

    it took me years to figure out pacing, and more than necessary to realize you ought to do long runs to train for a marathon 😉 so don’t feel too bad.

  2. Arcteryx Says:

    hoping that the 5k run went well, hope the run will improve more for the future marathons to come… 🙂

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