Week 9

4, 7, 4, 16
Rain... though shalt not defeat me! Both the medium and long runs were done in light rain. Most likely not a coincidence, these were both also the fastest I've run those lengths. It is not because I want to get out of the rain quicker, because after running through the rain for an hour plus I'm not going to get any wetter if I'm out there 2 minutes longer. It is because I don't get as warm and dehydrated which just exhausts me. Supporting evidence is that I drank a lot less during both of these runs and I felt just fine. Yes, I still re-hydrated plenty but did not need to do as much during the actual run.

This week I only did the medium, second short run, and the long run. As I mentioned in the last post, I was aiming at 13 miles for this long run since I didn't want to jump from 10 to 16. However, I couldn't do just 13 miles since that pesky 0.1 miles to make it a half marathon was just too tempting. It was a great run. I started off stiff and a bit sore, but once I got in the flow then things just went well. With the aforementioned rain, I was able to do my 10 mile check point in 1:56:ish and the entire half marathon in 2:31:48. While I'm not overly concerned about pace, I was happy that it was 11:35 over the course of the entire thing.

Next Week
5, 8, 5, 16
My true goal of this training is to complete the marathon without seriously injuring myself. To that end, I will not be doing the first short run this week either. My body has expressed the need to take that extra time to recover. Along with the gradual ramp-up of the long runs, that one will only be 15 miles since I do want to limit how much I increase every week. Therefore since the medium run and the short runs both went up a mile, I'm not bumping the long run as much. A realistic plan for this week is 8, 5, 15. As a note, the 8, 5, 8 is the longest short/medium run set that the program sets out. It's definitely starting to level out.