Gone Crazy: Week 2

My second week of super-condensed marathon training is in the books. It was another seven days of surprises but the biggest one has to be how quickly I've gotten back into the swing of training full bore. Cranking out 35 miles seemed like a long shot but 35.3 miles later I'm still going strong.

I started out the week with a slow 7 mile slog on dead legs. I happened to be working near my old home and decided to take a run on the Yough River Trail for old times sake. Apparently my body just hates flat and hot this year. I'm sure that bodes very well for Darlington (insert sarcasm here).

On Tuesday, my running partner/best friend's boyfriend and I decided to attempt two loops of our cemetery route. According to my Garmin, one loop is about 500 feet of gain and 500 feet of loss in 4.5 miles. We decided to cut the loops down to 5k even by walking to and from the cemetery. We were both miserable by the end but we finished our hilly 10k without any lasting harm.

 Elevation profile for one full loop of the cemetery

After two very slow, tough runs in a row I took the hint and rested Wednesday. It must have worked because the rest of my week only got better from there. Thursday I headed to North Park and ran the 5 mile loop around the lake. My only goal was to run it as hard as I could and see what happened. I ended up completing the loop in 43:40 for an 8:44 average pace. I was spent but thrilled!

Yeah, that happened.

Friday was pretty much a recovery run with the Electrodash 5k actually being 2.36 miles and too crowded to really run. I'm sure the forced slowdown was exactly what my legs needed so that my running partner and I could run long Saturday. We managed to cap off the second week of marathon training with a 12 mile run that was almost exactly the same pace as my 10 miler last week. 

YES!

Sunday I did a short 3 mile shakeout run to hit my goal of 35 miles for the week. I'd love to hit 40 miles for week 3 but I'm not sure it's feasible. I have to keep reminding myself that it's more important to arrive at the starting line healthy than over trained. So my A goal will be 40 and my B goal is to beat this weeks 35 miles. I guess my all-else-fails goal is to get in a 14 mile long run and a few other runs during the week.

And now I can start to panic because we are less than 5 weeks out from Darlington!