This Week’s Training Recap: Hello, Humidity

The first of my marathon training recaps is here! I’ll be posting weekly the ups and downs of my runs. Today is exactly 5 weeks out from the Akron Marathon, so I’m finishing up some of my highest mileage weeks of training before my highly anticipated taper (also known as carbs on carbs on carbs) arrives.

This week’s snapshot:

Total miles: 59

Sunday: 8 miles

Monday: 9 miles with 5 x 1k @ 5k pace: goal 3:53, actuals 3:58-4:02

Tuesday: 2 miles (to and from the gym) + crossfit + 6 miles Trail Run Tuesday with Cass and Em after work

Wednesday: 12 miles

Thursday: 2 miles (to and from the gym) + crossfit

Friday: 2 miles (2 and from the gym) + crossfit

Saturday: 18 miles with 14 @ Marathon pace with SCRR: goal 8:00/mile, actual 8:07/mile

Overall: My legs were feeling heavy most of the week from running 60-65 miles the past few weeks. Missed my paces on my workouts for the week for the first time in this training cycle. I’m not upset about it, though–I’ve been feeling so far that my training has been going TOO smoothly and I think that having some days where it feels like you have to work harder than normal are good.

High: I woke up on Wednesday excited to run, it poured and stormed the entire time, I came back drenched, and I loved every minute of it.

Low: Saturday was hot and humid and the first marathon pace run I’ve struggled with. It left me feeling exhausted and I ended up napping Saturday afternoon.

This week’s Long Run recovery eats:

This nutrition-packed (but still calorie dense to recover from my LR) Healthified Cookie Dough Blizzard:

photo from Stephanie Eusebi Nutrition & Wellness, http://stepheusebi.com

It was deee-lish. I halved the cookie dough batter recipe and still felt that it had plenty of cookie dough bites.

Lunch was this Mexican Macaroni Salad from The Pioneer Woman:

I used whole wheat pasta, added Trader Joe’s Spicy Jalepeno chicken sausage (for some protein), yellow bell peppers (added veggies) and subbed greek yogurt for the sour cream. Turned out yummy and now I have lunch for the work week!