The halfway point

Welcome back(for those of you that read this)! I have been away from this for a while and just wanted to share a few thoughts on how marathon training is going;hence the title of this blog. For any new readers reading this blog, I am using the Hansons Marathon Method.

It is hard to believe that I am nine weeks through training. Training has gone pretty well so far, but week nine is the week I thought would get me. Here is what the week looked liked:

M-easy 8(at 8:30 pace)
T-6x800(3:09 pace)
W-Off day(my favorite!)
Th-8 mile tempo at 7:25 with 1.5 WU/CD
F-easy 7
S-long 15 at 8:05 pace
Su-easy 8

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday were great. The workouts went as planned and I had no worries about anything. My foot is having some issu that made me worries about my tempo run, but it did not hurt during my run at all. Saturday, Sunday and the two workouts after that did worry me.

Normally I would have gotten my long run in early on Saturday, but I had to be up early to get to work. I worked till 3:30 and needed to eat. That meant I wouldn't get my run in till around 5 p.m. During my run, I took a Strawberry-Kiwi GU Roctane at mile five and felt great for the duration of the workout. When that got finished, I stretched, ate, showered and tried to get to bed early because it would be another early morning.

The long run and a lack of sleep did not help me during work or my run. I got home around 12:30 p.m. and slept till about 4:30.  My legs, body and brain were exhausted. Everything about the day screamed a run sometime around 8 p.m., but the weather looked dicey and forced me outside. What happened after that is probably going to be the most memorable run of my training session.

The Hansons method allows for easy runs to be 1-2 minutes slower than marathon pace; my run would be close to a nine minute mile. Every inch of that eight mile run hurt. I finally understood what they meant by cumulative fatigue. It seemed crazy that an eight mile run at this pace would hurt so much. It is a run I will certainly not forget for a very long time. It made me tougher and I definitely appreciate that part of it, but I just wanted to be in bed the whole time.  My legs probably wondered how long they would be tired for.

Week 10 got started with a six mile run that hurt just as much as the run on Sunday, but I willed my way through it. The track workout(3x1600) went slower than expected, but it got done. Even though it did not go as planned, it is probably the best I felt mentally after any of my workouts; my mood had been really high. With the workouts starting to get marathon specific, things will get harder, but I will be ready for it.

How is training going for you?