Hello friends, how’s everyone doing?

To start off, in terms of my decline in blogging, quite frankly I’ve been too busy all day, every day, to keep up on my normal frequency. I’m pretty positive no one is too distraught over this, I’d just thought I’d offer some explanation as to why I’ve been off the interwebs more so recently.

On the same note, I’ve been the best kind of busy. My days are flying by, I’m learning a lot, and although there’s a definite stress factor to my new job I’m really enjoying it.

But now, let’s talk about some running.

Here is how week #6 of Chicago Marathon training looked.

M: Rest

T: 10 m run @ 8:10ish

W: 7 m tempo run. 1 m warm up, then 5 starting at 7:45 and progressively going down, ending at 7:25, 1 m cool down. + BodyPump

T: 8 m easy run

F: 80 m swim

S: 15 m run for time—finished in 2:00

S: 2 hour spin, lifting

Total: 40 miles

I wanted this week to be a mini cutback week. I have one more cutback week scheduled before peak weeks/taper, and so I figured it would be good to get in an easier week before I start increasing to 50+.

I was debating my long run distance up until the night before. Technically, I should be ready for 20. I’ve done 16 and 18 twice, and 20 would be logical for this week. However, I’m realizing I started training a bit early, and since I want to peak at 22-23 and not do more than 4 20+ runs, I needed to do some rearranging. I also knew that I wanted to do some spinning on Sunday, which would not have been too awesome the day after a 20 miler.

So, instead, I decided to test out my new “Let’s run faster” theory with a shorter long run distance. The plan was to accomplish 2 things:

1) majority of miles @ marathon goal pace

2) practice running in some heat

The second goal wasn’t too hard to come by. I started the run around 9, later than normal, with the intention of running in the hotter weather. I know there is a decent likelihood of Chicago being hot on race day, as history has shown, and so I’m trying to help my mild Pacific Northwest climatized (go with that word) self get used to some more serious sweating. It wasn’t too bad (about 70 degrees) but relatively speaking I was feeling the heat. Good job, one goal achieved.

Now, the other goal was definitely achieved if you just look at the numbers involved. There were several miles in the sub 8 min zone, and I finished in 2 hours flat—averaging 8 minute miles. In fact, I ran a half marathon PR on this run.

However, those numbers are a little bit of a lie.

I stopped 4 or so times for a quick sip of water, and once to stretch. And quite honestly, I really didn’t feel awesome for the majority of the time. My legs were heavy, and they never really loosened up like they normally do. When I got home, there wasn’t much more I could do aside from lay horizontal on the floor and Tweet about my blister bff.

Seriously, that thing will not go away.

However, despite the stops, I’m happy with how it was run. While running, I was below where I wanted to be, and it felt good to push it during a long run as opposed to gingerly ticking the miles by. Sure, I love that style of long run running too, but sometimes it’s nice to not spend a ton of time on my feet.

Otherwise, training this week was good. Wednesdays are still my favorite workouts, and I’m really liking the relaxed runs on Thursdays. The swim on Friday was heavenly as well, especially since I hadn’t spent time in the pool for almost a month.

This week, I’m hoping to get to 55 miles—the highest mileage week I’ve ever had. It will cap with a 20 miler on Saturday, and with some luck, ice, and rolling—my legs won’t be too dead at the end of it all. I’m getting to a point where I’m really looking forward to my rest days—which is a good indication that I’m doing what I should be in my individual workouts.

In other news…

Did anyone watch the men’s marathon? If not…and you don’t want a spoiler…scroll down a bit, and ignore the next paragraph.

It was pretty shocking to see not one but TWO of the Americans drop out so early. I suppose it’s the nature of the sport, and the nature of the marathon…but man, really? I’m sure there was perfectly legitimate reasoning on both their parts, but I can’t even imagine how bad a DNF would feel at the Olympic marathon. It was an impressive finish though, and I was really happy for Meb with his 4th place victory. And I know watching the marathon is supposed to be inspiring and make everyone want to go out and run forever…but I really just felt tired watching them. I turned to BF and was like, “Tell me why I do this again?” because those guys looked so beat. Then again…I’m not averaging under 5 minute miles and running against the fastest dudes in the world.

Anyway, it was a lovely weekend in Seattle, and aside from the aforementioned sweaty activities, BF and I hung out downtown, relaxed, and went on a little water adventure yesterday. We went stand-up paddleboarding, which was super fun! I was pretty nervous about a number of things, namely cold water, falling, and sharks…but once we got comfortable all was good and we had a great time. One of us fell off more than the other…I’ll let you guess who it was.

I hope you all had lovely weekends! Happy Monday.