eugene marathon training | Fitness Fatale

My life outside of work has been consumed for the last 5 weeks by two things: wedding planning and marathon training. I thought it would be a good time for a status update.

Wedding Planning

Planning has been going well! In the last 5 1/2 weeks I’ve secured a venue (wedding date is September 28 of this year!), hired our day of wedding coordinator (she works for the venue), secured a discounted room block at our host hotel, bought my wedding dress, chose our wedding colors (light grey, white and yellow) booked our wedding photographer, took engagement photos (my step-mom is a wedding photographer so she took the photos), printed and added labels to all our Save the Date cards. We’re waiting to send the Save the Dates until we finish our wedding website which has been more work than anticipated (also narrowing down a guest list was very tough as well)!

Asking Mike’s Sister Claire to be a Bridesmaid!

I also asked all 9 of my bridesmaids to stand by my side on my big day. I was able to see 8 of them in person but one I had to mail out. I had these grand plans for how to ask Asia to be my Maid of Honor. One idea I had was to get a poster board and surprise her one of her runs by holding the sign up (i.e. like a race sign) asking her to be my MOH. Another idea was to make a tank top asking her and wear it to the Hot Chocolate Race. in the end, i just came over to her house with wine and flowers and the card I made her. She was thrilled and of course said yes! For all the other bridesmaids, I gave them cards that I made using materials I bought at Michael’s. I was proud of my craftiness!

Allison’s Instagram Announcement After I Asked!

Tonight we have a tasting with a caterer who I really feel good about. We already had one tasting and it was very generic and greasy food and I was not thrilled. The caterer we are seeing tonight already had us over to her house for wine and appetizers and we discussed our “vision” for our big day as well as constructed a menu with her help. Tonight we’ll try the menu and I’m very hopeful! She is affordable and creative with her food.

Marathon Training

Hot Chocolate 15k!

Marathon training has been going as well as wedding planning! A week and a half ago after my not so great 20 mile run, my coach emailed me this:

When I analyzed the file from the 15km last week this is what I came up with. You actually went through the 9.3 mile mark in 1:10:56 which is a 7:37 pace. The normalized pace which is what we call the effort taking into account the hills would have been 7:29 pace that equates to a 1:09:35 time. That puts us in the 3:28 range now for your marathon goal.

I wouldn’t worry too much about how the run went today, bottom line is that you got the mileage in and we know where your fitness is right now based on the races and other workouts and you know why you suffered a bit towards the end of the run.

Yahoo! Although I’m not so sure about that 3:28 remark,I am at this point pretty confident that if baring any serious craziness on race day, I can qualify for Boston. One of the reasons I don’t believe that I can run a 3:28 is that a) he adjusted my time for the course being exactly 9.3 miles yet Eugene certainly won’t be exactly 26.2 and b) I didn’t stop for water at all during the last two races and I will definitely be using aid stations at Eugene (whether or not it’s to refill my handheld water bottle or to use the cups is TBD).

At this point though, I do think I have what it takes to clear the 3:35 mark at Eugene. All I am hoping for is to cross the 25 mile marker knowing that even if I ran a 10 min/mile (or slower!) from there on out that I’d still qualify. I want to enjoy the moment I’m crossing the finish line as a Boston Qualifier, not be racing the clock for the last mile. But of course, if I have to race the clock to get it, that’s fine too!

My tempo runs have been going well and my pace for tempos has dropped from the high 7:40s/low 7:50s when I first started working with my coach to the 7:15-7:25 range (depending on the length of the tempo interval). I ran 22 miles at a 8:53 average this past weekend and it was the best I’ve felt on a 20+ mile training run. It didn’t seem like I was pushing it too hard. I was ready to be finished at the end but I knew I could run 4 more miles at that pace. This coming weekend I have my last big run – a 20 miler with the last 6 miles at marathon goal pace (8:08 ish). I really hope this will be a confidence boosting long run going into my final 2 weeks of training.

18 days til Eugene and 171 days until our wedding!

When I signed up for Eugene back in early November, it seemed SO far away. At that point, I wasn’t sure what my goals for the race would be yet – I didn’t know if Surf City was a possible BQ or if I’d even feel ready at Eugene. I just knew that it would be a fun racing with girlfriends. After realizing that Surf City wasn’t going to be my BQ and officially setting my sights on doing it at Eugene, April 28 suddenly had more significance.

And now it’s only 2 months away.

Awesome self portrait from a run this week

Do I feel ready? I have no idea! After Surf City I knew that I still had work to do. Running a 1:46 was a great PR but it was only a slightly faster pace than I’d need to run 26.2 miles at Eugene (hey at least it wasn’t slower than my BQ goal pace!). I hired a running coach and my training has been going well. Although my weekly workout structure is very similar to what I was doing while using the Advanced Marathoning training plan, I’m actually running less miles than I would have if I had self-coached myself.

But, those miles have been faster. My coach often gives me pace goals for my workouts and they are pretty fast. Instead of speed-work like Yasso 800s, I’ve been doing tempo intervals. When we first started, three weeks ago, he said my goal tempo pace was 7:31 and my current pace was 7:51. As of this week, my new tempo pace is 7:31! I’ve inched it down each week and have gotten faster. My long runs haven’t been that long, but the last two have included 25-30 minutes of tempo intervals at the beginning of the run which has made the runs seem MUCH longer than they actually are. After my 12.6 mile run on Sunday I felt like I had run at least 16 miles.

From my tempo run on Wednesday

I’m really excited to put some of this new fitness to the test next Sunday (March 10th) at the San Diego Half Marathon. I won’t be racing it, but I believe the plan is for me to run it at goal pace with a few warm-up miles before. I won’t be tapering either, so I’m curious to see how 8:10 min/miles feel, considering I ran Surf City at 8:05 min/miles and it felt pretty challenging. If I can pull of BQ pace for 13.1 miles at San Diego half without a taper, I will feel like I’m definitely improving and on my way to a good race at Eugene. I won’t know my plan for the race until Sunday at the earliest with my Coach emails me my weekly workouts but as of now, I think that’s the plan!

The first of what i would consider a “long” run is tomorrow – 16 miles! I actually really like long runs over 14 miles for some reason. They make me feel strong and accomplished. I usually run long runs on Sunday but this week Asia and my long run instructions from our coaches are similar so we want to run together and she can’t run Sunday. My instructions are to run it at a 8:50-9:10 pace and I’m hoping to easily run it sub 9. I’ve been running my mid-week long runs (8 miles) sub 9 consistently without feeling difficult so I think this can happen. However, my legs and glutes are very sore today from my hard tempo on Wednesday night and my strength training last night (I decided to do P90X Core Synergistics). The workout kicked my ass! I’m expecting the sore shoulders, back and arms to set in later today from all of the push-ups and plank. This morning my legs were heavy on my 8 mile run so I made sure to stretch for extra long and even foam rolled!

I’m definitely happy with my decision to hire a coach and I think that my fitness has improved quite a bit already. I just need to calm my mind sometimes that I should be running farther and remind myself that my coach knows what he is doing – that’s why I hired him!

How can you tell when you’ve increased fitness/gotten faster? Do you like running long like I do?

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Tag Archives: eugene marathon training

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