Week 4 of marathon training is in the books. As I alluded to last week, this week was a huge increase. The looming feeling going into the week was like being in the station of a launch coaster, like Top Thrill Dragster, where all of a sudden we’ve gone from 0 to 120 in less than 4 seconds. All this and according to the blog widget, there are 100 days until the marathon.
Monday was a normal 3 miles and 7 strides. I finally got back into the Meb For Mortals form drills, and thanks to a meeting that has changed it’s time six times, I ran in the morning. Nothing really of note here, but I did run across the Suspension Bridge in Cincinnati during this run. Total distance: 4.0 miles
Tuesday was interesting. As I was arriving at the office around 6:00 to run in the morning, many traffic signals and streetlights were out. It was windy, but not “zOMG BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES” windy. I ran up a large hill – those that have run the Flying Pig Half Marathon or Full Marathon know the hill I ran up. Running around the Eden Park Overlook with no streetlights was interesting. This was, by far, the warmest run of the week. 6.14 miles.
Wednesday was another morning run due to a lunchtime conference call. I did the same route as Monday, only backwards. 3.94 miles.
Thursday the weather broke. 20 in the morning, so I ran at lunch. After launching my general complaints about life on the Runnit Complaints and Confessions thread, I looked at the McMillan Run Calculator, giving it my time for the Flying Pig Half last year (1:48:53) and my marathon goal (3:59:59). It told me I can already run that. I decided to adjust my watch’s M pace range, down to 8:25 – 8:40 min/mi from 8:35 to 8:50 min/mi. This run went up a mile (from 5 to 6 miles). I ran the M pace portion at 7:52 min/mi. 7.69 miles by the time warm up and cool down were done.
Friday wasn’t too bad in the morning, 35 or so. I ran in the morning because I could get started early and I have/had stuff to do in the midday (I’m typing on Friday mid-morning). I didn’t eat anything in the morning because I was running a little late to the office. I felt fine through the first half, although my paces were suffering (I didn’t know, I tend to not look at my watch when it beeps to tell me the prior mile’s time). I took a Gu after my watch hit 5 miles and it definitely helped – the last few miles were much quicker and I wasn’t pushing that hard. 11.01 miles.
As I was looking in my tracking spreadsheet, I noticed that this was only the second round of a six round fight. February is going to go from starting at a 12 mile long run to ending at a 15 mile long run. This will be tough, but nothing worth doing isn’t. Weekly mileage 33 miles, 4:38 spent running.
In other news, I bought running shoes over the Internet for the first time. They get delivered today (the day I’m typing this).
Cheers!