Vermont City Marathon: Training Week #2

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Vermont city marathon run blog

Because of the upcoming double digit distances this training plan, I worked with my coach to swap my long runs to Saturdays to participate more often with the Capital Striders (the Des Moines area running community) group runs — which are, painfully, at 7:30 am. I did something similar in my last marathon training and getting the long run over with early Saturday seemed to work well for me. Though getting up at 6 am on a Saturday is definitely not the easiest, I usually take a nice afternoon nap — and I wait to do my Sunday recovery run in the afternoon.

Week #2 of Marathon Training Plan looked like this:

Monday: Rest
Tuesday: Tempo Interval Run
Wednesday: Easy Run + Strength
Thursday: Yoga
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Long Run
Sunday: Recovery Run + Core

Iowa blogger run marathon

My treadmill is still busted, despite receiving two replacement motherboards from ProForm. So, that meant a couple evening runs in the dark after work and ALL of my runs this week outdoors. The whole situation is totally irritating seeing as how we’ve had the equipment for less than a year AND purchased a 4-year warranty — and bundling up just to do an easy 20-minute outdoor run pisses me right off… but I’m working through it. But if I don’t get a promise of a replacement treadmill by next month, I’m REALLY going to lose my shit on someone.

Monday: GLORIOUS REST — and another recognized holiday at work — has me feeling finally (mostly) back to normal. We got a crazy ice storm in the Midwest on Monday, but the above-freezing temps melted mostly everything away overnight.

Tuesday: Short run — 3 miles, followed by an at-home kettlebell-focused strength workout.

Average 10:25 pace

Wednesday: Tempo Intervals — 6x400s (with a mile warm-up and mile cool down) in my secret stretch of sidewalk near the backside of my development. I love it; it’s a near-perfect .25 mile block (a little over, actually) and only slightly uphill that I just run back-and-forth.

Finishing these intervals was TOUGH, and I slowed down quite a bit on the last set. Looking forward to seeing myself get more consistent for a full set.

Thursday: Yoga Roots at LifeTime Fitness. Some weeks I love this class and others I hate it. I guess that means it’s working. Recently the instructor changed the programming to hold poses for 10 breaths instead of 5 — and holding some of the poses are really, really hard. The instructor tried to adjust me in triangle and I nearly collapsed.

Friday: Rest Day! I ended up meeting some friends after work for happy hour at Wellman’s Pub.

Saturday: I had 6 miles on my training plan, so I joined the Capital Striders group run (at 7:30 am) for the short route (which ended up being about 5 miles). After my running friends departed, I explored the Drake University campus to finish out my last mile. It was a pretty nice day in Des Moines, and I can’t believe I got my ass out of bed that early.

Average 10:21 pace

Des Moines running group blogger

Sunday: Easy 20 minute run — and despite it being 37 degrees, it felt REALLY really chilly.

Average 10:11 pace

WEEKLY RUNS: 4
WEEKLY MILES: 16.1 miles
TOTAL TRAINING MILES: 18.11 miles

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