Disney Training: Week 8

Week 8 of training went very well, just like Week 7:

Week	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun	Total
8	6 easy	5.8 (speed - 6x800)	off	7 (5@MP)	5 easy	5.7 easy	10 long	39.5

On Saturday, Maple wanted to come on my run with me. I told her I had to do 6 miles, so she could run the first half with me and I'd run the second half by myself. But she insisted she wanted to do the whole run, and Sean reminded me that I hadn't thought she could do our 4-miler a few weekends ago (which was no problem for her). So I took her with me and she did great! Afterwards she said she never wanted to run again, but she changed her mind the next day.

Today I'm going to ramble on about some things I'm doing differently in this, my second marathon training cycle.

I hurt my IT band before my first marathon, and I started going to PT right afterward. I learned a number of hip strengthening exercises which have helped me immeasurably. Even after my IT band calmed down, I kept up with the exercises (or at least most of them). A couple of months ago, I tried cutting back because all those exercises were making me crazy, but I started to get aches and pains again. I pared it down to just five leg exercises and went back to doing them more often. I'm also doing some core and arm strength exercises which were recommended in Advanced Marathoning.

At the same time I started PT, I also started seeing a chiropractor for ART. ART is awesome and has helped me so much with my IT band, as well as some little niggles I've had in the past few months. Even though I'm not dealing with an injury right now, I still see Dr. V once a month to get ART on anything that's bothering me.

My shoe troubles have been an ongoing source of annoyance, pain, and boring blog posts. I've finally found the right shoe/insole combination (Asics GT-2170 and Sole DK insoles) and my feet/legs aren't bothering me at all. I have two pairs of the shoes that I switch between on alternate days. Sometimes I'm tempted to try new shoes but then I hear a loud buzz and I drop my coffee and forget what I was thinking about.

I'm also using a different training plan this time, and I'm running SIX TIMES A WEEK. And nothing hurts. Isn't that weird? It's fucking amazing actually. Three of my weekly runs are super easy, like 11:00 pace easy, and I think it's really good for all my tendons and ligaments to do lots of slow and steady miles. That's what the Hansons say anyway. And have you heard the rule that your long run shouldn't be more than 25% of your weekly mileage? Last time I trained for a marathon, my long runs were typically 45-70% of my weekly mileage! That's crazy, and it's not a shock that I got injured. This time around, I'm doing shorter long runs, which are in line with the 25% thing. This week I ran about 40 miles and my long run was 10. I'll run up to 16 miles for my longest runs, but at that point I'll be running 55-60 miles a week.

Almost done.

I'm also eating more and thinking about my diet less. I gained five pounds and I feel better. I'm still vegetarian, but I'm not avoiding anything except meat, which I don't like anyway.

Finally, I'm religious about stretching and rolling. I hardly ever stretched last time, and I didn't know how to foam roll. I spent way too many nights lying in bed with aching muscles. That was dumb. Life is better now. I stretch after every run, and Sean and I roll every day. There's lots of moaning and grunting. It's hot.

I'm almost halfway done with this training cycle and I feel great. Let's hope it stays that way!

In Week 9, I'll be doing basically the same runs, except I'll swap my Thursday tempo run for some easy miles; a kind of pseudo taper for my (very hilly) half marathon on Sunday. I'm hoping for a PR, but I might be coming down with a cold, so we'll see what happens. My "A" goal is to run under 2 hours, which means running at my marathon goal pace of 9:09. If I hope to run 26.2 at that pace, I have to be able to run 13.1 at that pace as well, so this will be a test to see how realistic my goal is.