Almost… but not quite??

I apologize for not writing more during the week! This week has been absolutely insane.

How has the “100 mile/week” plan been going? Actually, pretty well, except for tonight. I’m really disciplined about making sure I have time for my run/runs. Here’s a run down of my week so far:

Monday: 6 miles AM, 6 miles PM
Tuesday: 10 miles AM (legs felt great!! They could tell that yesterday was a “recovery” day, so I let myself go a little and averaged about 7:30s for the last half of the run). Then 10 striders afterwards. 6 miles PM.
Wednesday: 15 miles. I’m struggling to concentrate during the work day. Not good. I’m sooo tired (the I can’t concentrate type of tired). That’s the one side effect of training volume that I could really do without. Guess it would help if I actually slept a decent amount during the week… Anyway, I finished the 15 miler at 11:10 at night. It’s just been so hot! I can’t get in a 2 hour run during the day at work, so I have to do it after work. Problem is that it’s so hot/humid that I don’t want to start until after 8 or 8:30… which means I’m finishing really, really late. Didn’t sleep much Wednesday night 🙂 Not good.
Thursday: 6 miles AM, 6 miles PM. Even though this is still 12 miles, I felt like I had a lot of extra time in my day!!! Whoot, whoot!! How exciting!
Friday: Wow, am I beat. I allowed myself to sleep in an extra 2 hours this morning (was going to do my workout in the AM, which would have been smart since today will be 90+ degrees) because I’m absolutely exhausted. I’m still not 100% awake/alert, even with that. Hmmm… Anyway, today’s my hard workout. I begin around 7:30 pm, but it’s still 85 degrees and humid out. My legs feel really tired too. Great. I’m supposed to do a 3 mile warm up, 7 miles at tempo, 3 miles cool down. I quickly find out that my legs and head aren’t into this. I did 4 miles (averaging 6:31) and then stopped and called it quits for the evening. I’m working WAAAY too hard to hit these times (HR was 203 at end of last mile), which isn’t a good sign. Plus, I’m just mentally struggling to get myself to get into this workout. I know fighting through workouts like this leads to burnout (at least for me), and I still have 8 weeks of hard training to put in. I decide that it’s better to end early and be happy with the work I’ve done (which is still a good workout! 4 months ago I would have been very happy with a 4 mile tempo).

But now that I’m home, recovered, I’m thinking to myself… I still really, really, really want to hit that 100 mile goal. I’m now 5 miles short… should I do an extra 5 miles on Saturday or Sunday just to hit that target? I know 100 is just an arbitrary number, but it’s such a nice, round, arbitrary number. I honestly think that during the marathon when I’m hurting, I’ll think to myself, “remember when you did that 100 mile week? You can fight through this”. Plus, I’d just really like to say I’ve hit that milestone 🙂

Plan for Saturday: 8 miles easy recovery
Plan for Sunday: 24 miles, longest of the entire training plan!!! (Might add the 5 miles in the PM. I thought about adding them to Saturday, but I think there’s a lot of benefit in having a day to really recover)

That’s all for tonight — I’m off to bed for some much needed rest!!!!