Grandma’s Marathon Training Recap – Three Months Down!

Hello friends! As I shared in an earlier post, I have started working with a running coach. I am training for a June marathon – Grandma’s in Duluth, Minnesota. My goal is to go sub-4 and now I’m just over one month out from race day. Time is flying and I’m getting excited! Now that I am back to training, I will share my training recap every other week. I hope you’ll join in and link up! You can always follow my progress daily on Instagram, where I share all my runs.

Week of April 23

Monday – Five easy miles and core before heading off to Florida for a work conference. 

Tuesday – A HOT workout in Florida – two miles up, 12×2 minutes hard (7:45-8:00), 2 minutes easy and one mile down. That was a TOUGH workout in the heat but I got it done. 

Wednesday – Off – I think I was supposed to do core but forgot. But I did dance for LITERALLY HOURS at our member celebration at my conference. 

Thursday – Six miles with a 5k at the conference thrown in. More dancing! 

 

A beautiful morning for the #NALPAnnual 5k (plus a bit extra). 🏃🏾‍♀️🏃🏾‍♀️🏃🏾‍♀️ #runner #rundc #oiselleteamdmv #oisellevolee #blackgirlsrun #runthistown #womensrunning #bgr #womensrunningcommunity #irunthisbody #werundc #eatprayrundc #runtheyear #betterforit #flystyle #spellmantrained #4breaking4

A post shared by Courtney | Obsessed Runner (@eatprayrundc) on Apr 26, 2018 at 5:38am PDT

Friday – Three super struggle miles. My legs were incredibly tired after all the walking and dancing and this run was a STRUGGLE. But I got some miles in and that was what mattered. 

Saturday – Back in DC and rallied to run two legs of the Northface Marathon Relay. I’ve run this race with my Oiselle team gals for the past few years and this year, we made a whole weekend of it. Running two legs was tough – especially because I saw a huge ass SNAKE while on my first loop. I freaked out, screamed like I was being murdered and jumped about a foot in the air. Luckily, I ran my second loop with my friend and teammate Sam and we saw no snakes – thank goodness! About 12 miles total. 

Sunday – Three slow recovery miles to end the week.

Weekly mileage total: 36.6 miles

Week of April 30

Monday – Four easy plus core. 

Tuesday – Two up, 4 at 8:45 (actual: 8:50 / 8:37 / 8:34 / 8:45), 2 at 8:25 (actual 8:22 / 8:20), one down. I felt really great about this workout. It was hard but I was able to hit my paces. I have had trouble during this training cycle hitting faster miles after sustained effort at a hard pace, so I was very worried about the two miles at 8:25. I really worked hard to stay in it mentally and was pleased with the effort. 

Wednesday – Core. 

Thursday – Seven easy miles plus core.  

Friday – Six run commute miles to work. 

Saturday – 16 miles, with the middle ten at an average 8:55 pace. I was nervous about this all week, but it went really, really well! Yay. I’m starting to believe I can do this! 

Sunday – Three easy easy recover pace miles plus core to end the week.  

Weekly mileage total: 46 miles

Total mileage for this training cycle: 629.89