Marathon Training Week 8: Holdin' on....

This ended up being somewhat of a cutback for me, although I don't think it was intentional. Becky was out of town, and I didn't have CrossFit this week. She had planned on giving me homework, but I didn't receive a text from her, nor did I pursue it. I've been training really hard, and I thought it would be ok to take it a little easy. I don't know if that was her intent, but I sure felt better as the week went on. Physically, anyways. Mentally, I've had some stressors at work with a student as well as some minor mama drama at home. Juggling marathon training with life challenges is always tough. But the weather cooled off and...well, here's my weekly recap.

Monday: Scheduled rest day. I did do some yoga to stretch out the legs after that really tough run I did the day before. I'm participating in a 30 day yoga challenge with Beth at Running with the Sunrise, and I did 3 of the first poses all on Monday.

Tuesday: I got up with the sun to run 8 miles at marathon pace. At 6 am, it was 75 degrees and 75% humidity. Although it was tough, I ran 8.29 miles in 1:13:28, or an average of 8:52 minutes/mile. In those conditions, I'll take it.

This 8 felt like I was running in the sand.

Wednesday: I went to the studio for yoga. The theme for the class was Santosha, or contentment. It was a wonderful class, as always. We did a lot of poses against the wall, including a variation of bakasana (crow pose). If you've never been able to get into this pose, I highly recommend trying this one! I was kind of dizzy that morning, but if I moved slowly from pose to pose, my equilibrium returned quickly.

We did this variation of navasana (boat pose) with eagle legs (ardha garudasana)

Thursday: Becky had speedwork with 3 mile repeats x2 on the plan. I decided to make it a little more interesting and ran back to back 5ks. I haven't run a 5k in ages, and I wanted to see how I could do. Mother Nature cooperated too, by giving me a 60F temperature to run in. Splits: 24:47, 24:36, average 7:58 mins per mile. This is the run I needed to inject life back into my marathon training. Don't stop believin'!

This crazy weather has been giving us some spectacular morning skies! 

Friday: running rest day

Saturday: I got up early and ran a 5 miler in 53 degree weather! Dare I say I felt a little chilled? No complaints, I did this one a little faster than MP. I don't know if that was wise, considering that I had a half marathon the next day. But I took advantage of the beautiful morning to catch up on my yoga challenge too.

Warrior 1, Warrior 2, Pyramid pose, and plank for days 4-7.

After that early morning run, we headed south to my son's rugby match. Matthew was playing fullback, his dream position, where he got to do a lot of running and also defensive tackling. The team they played was really good brutal, and there were a lot of injuries. Matthew took a knee to the abdomen, after which he lost his breakfast. Towards the end of the game, he came out of the game because of the pain. He's not a complainer and I knew he must really have been hurting. He told me he wished I had brought some Tailwind so that he could have finished the came. Hey there! That's some good stuff....

Sunday: I had a half marathon on the schedule, just get my head in race mode. This one was a new one for me, the Alpine Runners Club Half Marathon in Lake Zurich, Illinois, which is about 10 minutes from my house. Easy, breezy right? I'll have a full recap on Tuesday, but let's just say that I was NOT prepared at all for the hills on this course. My first half marathon, in Door County, Wisconsin was super hilly, and I haven't run one like that since. This half was #14 for me, and if nothing else, it proved to be an exercise in mental toughness for me. Every time I approached a new hill (and there were plenty), I had to dig in and push myself up. Before I started, I promised myself that I wouldn't race this one, that it was a training run, and that was my mantra for the whole thing. I finished in 1:55:58, so I got my marathon pace. I also had very consistent splits. And I get to run 8 tomorrow morning. There's no rest for the wicked, apparently...

What song was the one that got me through the toughest miles of the race? This Skrillex and Nero remix of I SEE MONSTA's "Keep Holdin' On". Because that's what I did! Don't be put off by Skrillex, this is actually very listenable!

Another week down....and this will be my highest mileage week of training. I'm gearing up for that and hoping our temps stay moderate!

How about you? How's your training going? Any songs for me?

And as always, I'm linking up with my friends Holly at HoHoRuns and Tricia at MissSippiPiddlin' for their weekly wrap! It's a great way to see what everyone else is up to!