Marathon Training Week 3

If someone could not tell by reading the title of this blog post, I am training for my second marathon. The first few two weeks were pretty easy for the most part (minus a tired 8m run I had the first week).  There is no way I thought I would have an easy 18 weeks of training, but one can always dream. My dreams quickly ended as I started week the third week of training.

Towards the end of my second week of training I had a long run of nine miles to complete. I did not end up completing that run because I spent the weekend in Omaha for the College World Series and a friends birthday. I could have gotten a run in, but fun and humid weather got in the way. During the weekend I decided I would attempt my long run on the Monday I got back (June 24) since my long run for the week would be six miles. Little did I know, it would be one of the hardest nine miles I have had since I started running. 

Miles one through three went fairly well according to my long runs. I like to come out a little slower than my typical pace so I can save some energy for the end of the run. This is a strategy that has worked fairly well for since I started becoming a better runner. It worked according to plan because miles four through six went great; I felt great and my pace improved and stayed fairly even. I am not sure what happened once I hit mile seven, but nothing felt good. The day had been fairly humid but I have run in hot weather before so I did not think that would be an issue. I had just finished watching "Spirit of the Marathon" so I had been determined to push through the fatigue (not so smart when you can not breathe). I finished the run with a good time (just a little slower than my 10m race), but I did not feel great. The next two runs did not really go great as expected. I had a four mile on Thursday that despite leg fatigue, that went fairly well. I felt pretty good after the run and workout, but pain followed later that night and Friday. 

It made me nervous that my leg hurt in an area that is common for stress fractures. I had planned on doing a core/leg workout using an an app called Sworkit but I decided not to because of my leg. Later in the day I decided to ice my leg and get a free injury screening with a physical therapist. She ran me through a few test and did not think I had a stress fracture; good news. The bad news  is that she looked at my shoes (which I just bought) and said she said I probably need a new pair;bad news. Apparently she could tell from the ware on my shoes that I spend a lot of time on the outside of my feet and said that may come from my shoes over correcting me. She also suggested this site to me.

The moral of this story is to not over train, listen to your body and that is important to buy the right shoes. I took four days off and will try to run again today (July 2). I did a workout*/stretched and felt good after. Thanks for reading and hopefully I will do a better job of updating this blog.


*I started a squat challenge my friend Shannon sent me. I hope this helps me and is not over training.