Batshit Crazy: Marathon Training Week 3

Three weeks down and 26 days to go! As I sit here contemplating what I've accomplished with less than a month of hard work I'm a little blown away. I feel strong. I feel ready to face this marathon. And more than anything I feel ready to get back into the swing of racing and competing (look for a post on this in a day or two).

If you remember, at the end of week 2 I was very unsure of making my goal of 40 miles for this week. I was trying to keep my focus on hitting a long run of 14 miles and letting the rest of the miles for the week fall where they may. Well, I blew my goal out of the water with 41.2 miles for the week and a 15.15 mile long run.

 Super happy with my week 3 training

Week 3 workouts looked like this:

Monday: Rest

Tuesday: 5.5 super easy miles (11:04 pace)

Wednesday: 10 miles (9:55 pace)

Thursday: 6 trail miles (10:30 pace)

Friday: 4.5 easy miles (9:45 pace)

Saturday: Active recovery

Sunday: 15.15 miles (10:14 pace)

Active recovery at the Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival

More than pleased with this long run

I am foreseeing week 4 as a cutback week. Not necessarily because I need it but because it's the smart thing to do and I get to go see Mr. Wonderful. I don't know that we're going to take half a day of our time together to run 16-17 miles. I'm still going to set a minimum goal of 25 miles for the week just to keep my training up for week 5. Hopefully I can hold back my competitive (there's that word again!) drive for a week and not let it get to me mentally. 

Happy Labor Day everyone! I hope you're making the most of it!

Furthering My Edumacation

It's going to be a fun semester! And I'm honestly not sure if I mean that in a sarcastic way or not yet! There's just so much going on and some of the classes I'm taking are ones that I never would have guessed existed so I have no idea if I'm going to enjoy them or not yet.

My schedule for this semester is Functional Kinesiology (okay, I will love this class!), Business Aspects of Fitness, Sport Marketing, and Legal Aspects of Sport. I already have a business degree so most of the marketing and legal-ese is nothing new but I never really enjoyed it either. I just hope relating it to something I do love (fitness!) will help make it easier and more fun.

Either way, I have a lot on my plate this fall! Besides school, I have 6 weeks until the Baltimore Marathon! EEK! I've recovered really well from the Baker 50 Miler and I'm going to do some short races for fun this weekend. Then next week it is back to work on marathon training! It's even more important because....

I signed up for marathon #5 in November! I'll be running the Marshall University Marathon on November 11. I'm debating on finding one to squeeze in between Baltimore and Marshall too. However, I'll wait and see how Baltimore goes first I think!

Then there's a few shorter races that I'm really excited about. The first, of course, is the Pretty Muddy which you can read all about in yesterday's post. The second one that I'm dreaming of is the Runner's World half marathon in Bethlehem, PA on October 21. I'm a huge fan of RW magazine and frequent the Runner's World Online forums so this seems like a great way to do something with the staff get my picture in there!

This weekend my husband and I are doing the For The Love Of Lindsey 5k which we did last year too. Then on Labor Day we'll be doing the Kellersburg Labor Day 5k run. I feel like I've barely raced this year, which is true since I did 33 races last year compared to only 16 so far this year. I'm really looking forward to just doing some races for fun this weekend. I've been so focused on performance and goal races that I have skipped a lot of the smaller local 5k's that we usually support. I'm excited to remedy that over the long holiday!

Have any recommendations for another marathon or ultra that I can squeeze in? How many races is too many? What are your Labor Day plans?