Hi. Miss me?

That’s ok. Not much has been going on in the last week anyway. Wait, thats not true. A lot has been going on. I am usually pretty good at getting several posts in a week. Sometimes landing a post Monday-Friday. But, not so much this week. Last post being one week ago. Whoops.

Please trust me when I say that my posts have been lacking not because my running is lacking (though I feel it is) but because my social and work calendars have been bursting with all kinds of good stuff. So even when I have wanted to sit and write down some thoughts, I just didn’t have time. I’ve been having fun lately, so though I have missed my updates, it was still worth it.

(fun in the form of underwear = worth it)

But anyway, what I am getting into today is how the last 2 weeks of marathon training have been going. And it’s not going to bad but it’s definitely time to change things up.

I am not going to give you 2 weeks of daily break downs on my runs. It’s bad enough I haven’t written a post in a while, I certainly don’t want to bore you when I do, so I will just give you the abridged version. I can sum it up pretty easy…

Early weekday runs have been a fail and Sunday runs are still a fail.

So no changes there.

I am getting all my long runs in on Saturday’s. That is no issue. But I tend to have more work stuff early in the week, dinners with friends, visits to the horsey, etc. These things always seem to happen on Monday’s and Tuesday’s.

On the weekends, I have been getting my long runs in. But Sunday’s have been a miss.

In week 5, I ended up running my long run on the treadmill at the gym. I was supposed to run 12 miles but only got in 8 before the gym was closing and my movie ended. I downloaded “The Perks of Being  Wallflower” to my kindle and managed 8 miles indoors. If you haven’t seen it yet just read the book, honestly. But movies are my savior on the dreadmill.

The next Saturday, week 6, I decided to make up for my lost 4 miles by adding a mile to my scheduled 9 on the trail. Ten miles on the trail may as well be 12 miles on the road. I met up with the running club to run part of the Fools Run course and get familiar with it. Glad we did given that my fellow runners and I got a little lost.

It was kind of cold, and I had planned on 10 miles. But after being out on the trail for so long and the temps dropping, I started to notice that I couldn’t regulate my body temperature very well. One second I was burning up and then I was shivering cold. I know I underdressed some, which is crazy because I usually overdress, but it seemed to be harder to get warm when I was cold.

Anyway, half way through I decided that 8 miles would be good for the cold and for the level of difficulty of the course. But while 2 fellow runners and I forged ahead of the group, we found ourselves confused on a loop. Each direction of the loop looked eerily similar to the other. I think we ended up doing the loop more than once and then going the wrong way on a connector trail somewhere. This ended in us cutting through the woods to get to a trail we could see through the trees. Lesson learned.

(walking the ‘sound of music’ hills because running them was not going to happen after our never ending run)

So my 10 miles that was going to be 8 ended up being 10 anyway. Mission accomplished I guess.

My total miles for weeks 5 and 6 were not crazy low. I am not sitting on my couch thinking “I should really go running,” I am getting in my runs when possible. But, I have learned that maybe the added 5th day is not working for me. And 3 days of running back to back is not something that I am used to either.

My goals are not changing. I still am planning on reaching the goals I laid out at the beginning of training. Which are…

*Run multiple 20+ milers as part of my training

*Include the Pittsburgh Marathon on May 5th as one of the 20+ mile training runs

*Run the Cleveland Marathon at a Sub-5 pace.

These things have not changed. I also plan to continue increasing mileage on my mid-week runs as well as on the weekend. But to better fit my fitness and my budding social calendar, I have decided to modify my training schedule.

I do feel a little defeated changing my training 6 weeks in, but I know this will work better for me. It is breaking up my week day runs to days I am more accustomed to. I am for the most part dropping Sunday high miles. I will still do the trail runs when I can and any races I throw in there too, but no more set (mandatory) Sunday miles. It will just be a bonus.

This is something that I needed and I think it will end well. I will keep you posted.

Have you ever had to change your plans in the middle of a training plan? How about in the middle of a race or run? You have to make room for changes sometimes and my last schedule didn’t really allow with that to much. What do you do when you feel a plan just isn’t working? 

(thumb nail photo courtesy of David Sboray Photography)