Week 17: NYC & Dopey Plan
10/17: Rest Day
10/18: 4 miles - completed 4.51 miles, Tempo run. Easy first mile, tempo for 2 & 3 and then easy pace for 4. 10:25, 8:40, 8:19, & 9:51.
10/19: 4 miles - completed 4.52 miles, hill work. Cemetery hills felt good.
10/20: 4 miles - completed 5.07 miles. Went easy today.
10/21: Rest Day
10/22: 5 miles - completed 5.04 miles. Went with Kai, lots and lots of stopping but had a nice time.
10/23: 20 miles - completed 15.53 miles. Struggled to get up this morning, but once up had a good run. Decided to cut the mileage down. Good pacing, averaging 11:40 for my easy pace and ran the last three miles in 9:58 pace, which is right on marathon pace. But noticed my left hip was a little sore so backed off on total planned mileage.
Pretty happy with this week. Work has been very heavy and will remain so until I leave for New York. Feels like this has sapped some of my energy, but I still felt pretty good about each run this week. On a side note I have continued to keep up with the pushup challenge. 65 push ups a day, every day this month. It is really interesting how quickly the body adapts. At the beginning of the month I could barley get 10 straight done without a lot of effort. This morning I did 35 straight. I am think I need to simply expand this effort to some other exercises and keep going in November. I am just horrible about cross training though…
I did try the fruit sticks as opposed to shot bloks. They were much easier to chew and the new flavors were a very welcome change. So positives are that they are easy to get at and open on the run, easy to chew, and taste really good. But the negative seems to be they dried up in my mouth later in the run. I would have to eat with water. I would need to carry eight/ten of them for a marathon. That and 15 miles is not 26, still wondering if they would hold up for the full distance. I really should have used them during the mile-a-thon. I know I should not be doing something new during the race but I am so sick of shot bloks. I was hoping the fruit sticks would be a clear substitute. Maybe a combo of both?
Next week begins my first of two weeks of tapering. In a perfect situation I would go with three weeks of taper, but I am trying to balance my efforts for the NYC Marathon and also Dopey. I know I will need some rest time after NYC so I narrowed the taper for NYC to 2 weeks and the rest post marathon to one week. I will be continuing with 5 “runs” a week during the taper but will substitute some runs for walks and of course the long run on Sunday will be greatly reduced.
Week 18: NYC & Dopey Plan, Week 1 of Taper.
10/24: Rest Day
10/25: 4 miles - walk
10/26: 4 miles - Hill work
10/27: 4 miles - walk
10/28: Rest Day
10/29: 6 miles - marathon pace work
10/30: 6 miles - easy pace
