World Vision Training - 6 weeks to go

For most of the marathons I’ve raced, six weeks before the race is about the time I start wishing that the marathon was here already. At that point, I’ve trained 10 - 14 weeks and I just want to be done training and run the race.

Not this year. This year, if you’ve followed my blog, you know that I dealt with a lot of foot injuries over the past year. Although I seem to have recovered from the injuries, I haven’t done the training I would have liked, and instead of wishing the race were here, I wish I had a few more weeks to train.

Though I wish I had more time to train, things have been going well. The sore ankle that I was worried about has cleared up completely, and I haven’t had any pain from my previous foot injuries in over a month. The only thing giving me a little trouble is a sore quad, but it doesn’t bother me much when I run, and I’m hopeful it won’t be an issue on race day.

I had some positive happenings in my running last week including a solid interval workout, a season best time in the 5K, and my highest weekly mileage this training cycle. 

In interval workouts, I’m not doing marathon specific work. Instead, I’ve been focusing my workouts for the 5K since one of my goals for the year was to run under 18 minutes, and I’d like to get that done before Twin Cities Marathon. This past week I did a 10 X 500m at a 17:50 5K pace, and I hit every one of my splits. The workout definitely gave me confidence that I can break 18 minutes in the 5K before Twin Cities Marathon. I’ll write more about my 5K training and racing in a future post.

I was glad to get in over 45 miles of training this week, finishing the week with 47 miles. I don’t know how smart it is, but a few times, including last week, I’ve run a warm up for the parkrun 5K, raced the 5K and then put in a bunch more miles to make it my long run. The weather was decent Saturday, and I ran 15 miles and still had some pop in my legs at the end. I ran 6:38 pace for the last couple miles, so my racing the 5K in the first part of my long run didn’t turn out too bad.

So there’s my week. Thanks for reading. If you’re interested in donating to my Team World Vision fundraiser, you can donate through my Facebook fundraising page (I’m matching the next $100 in donations), or you can donate on my Team World Vision fundraising page.