This is the twelfth week of my marathon training plan for the Columbus Marathon. The marathon is October 20, 2019. I’m following the Pfitzinger 18/55 plan again. I’m keeping with the Star Wars theme for calling out the weeks, and this was going to be The Runner Strikes Back, but then Garmin and the Weather struck first.
Monday: 8 miles. Kept this reasonably easy, although I was enjoying chiller weather than what I’ve had, so it was nice. Ran in the park and the subdivision next to it. 8.04 in 1:13:40 (9:10 min/mile pace). Hydrated with water, no fueling. Ended the run with seven pull-ups.
Tuesday: 9 miles with 5 x 1k @ 5k pace. So the run started with this…
After over 20 minutes of a delay, the watch NEVER synced my workout. I ended up manually tracking laps since I had no other option. I started it with 2 miles warm-up, I started tracking the kilometers based on 0.6 mile increments, which means I was staring at my watch a lot more than normal. It also means that I muffed the last interval because my vision (particularly through sweat-covered and semi-fogged glasses) isn’t the best – I ran 0.53 instead of 0.6. Then I later realized it should have been 0.62 (and similarly, the lower-intensity phases should have been 0.31 instead of 0.30).
My paces were 7:19, 7:15, 7:30, 7:38, 7:33. The goal was 6:55 to 7:15 pace, and constantly looking at my watch and not having the audio cues to speed the 🤬 up didn’t help at all. Overall, 9.01 in 1:16:18 (8:28 min/mile pace).
Wednesday: 12 miles. Ran this in East Fork, which is always a difficult run. It also got pretty warm – 70 at run time, a full 10 degrees higher than the past two days. Hydrated with Gatorade. 12.04 miles in 1:51:57 (9:18 min/mile pace).
Thursday: 5 miles recovery. Kept this in the park because it’s four laps around the park. 5.16 miles in 45:28 (8:49 min/mile pace).
Friday: 18 miles with 14 at M pace. The run-time temperature for this was 71, and that’s a little toasty for pace running, and I’m not even sure if my watch was setup for it. I did push a little during the 14, which was ultimately at 8:47 min/mile. Alternated water and Gatorade Endurance at each mile, and took Gatorade Endurance Gels at 6 and 12. Overall, 18 miles in 2:41:19 (8:75 min/mile pace).
That’s it for the week – 52 miles in the books.