CIM Pre-Season Week 1

My goal marathon (CIM December 7th) is 22 weeks away – I’m using the next 6 weeks as my “pre-season” for the final 16 weeks of official marathon training. I’ll be using the next 5 weeks to wrap up P90X3 by completing Phase 3 and then spending the final week before official marathon training at the Oiselle Team running camp. I have a sprint triathlon in 2 weeks but the emphasis not on training for that – instead it’s on gaining some strength, running base building as well as a bit of shorter distance speed-work to prepare for the 5k we are running at Oiselle camp.

I won’t bother to recap the week leading up to the San Diego International Tri or the week following, as they were fairly uneventful. Post-triathlon I did get a few workouts in including a trail run up and down Torrey Pines and a 8.5 mile “long run” but I took 5 days off over the holiday weekend for my trip to Cabo so it wasn’t a high mileage or intensity week. I came back to training this week and I definitely could feel the effects of my long weekend of drinking and non-exercise as well as the reduction in strength training in the last months, especially during my P90X3 workouts. I’m not upset about it, as I am well aware that I can’t always be in peak shape and I will definitely need this downtime in order to avoid burn out leading into CIM. 22 weeks is a long time and I need to be able to maintain focus while also avoiding burn out during that time in order to have a great race.

This week was a very busy week, with longer hours at work (and much more stress than usual) as well as final preparations for my best friend Asia’s bridal shower, which I was organizing and planning (luckily with the help of her mom and sister!). In the end, I would still say it was a really successful first week back at training and despite all the madness, I kept a pretty clean diet.

Monday: 

Rest Day. I was fried and seriously still had a hangover from Cabo (does anyone else get these 2 day hangovers now?! What happened to the days in my early 20s when I could go out til 4 a.m. and wake up feeling just fine the next day, let alone TWO DAYS later!?).

Tuesday: 

AM: 5 mile Zone 2 run with Mike. We ran before work and it was already warm. It felt good to run and I was surprised at how easy it felt.

PM: P90X3 Decelerator. This workout kicked my ass! I literally felt nauseous at the end and had to pause between the final two moves. It was a full body workout which included a lot of high intensity push-up, pull-up and squat moves. I take it back if I ever said P90X3 was easier than P90X.

Wednesday: 

AM: 45 minute Zone 1 run with my friend Allison. Allison and I met up and ran super easy. As always, it was great catching up with her. After she took off, I did 4 x 8 sec steep hill sprints. Brad Hudson, who writes the book “Run Faster” which I plan to follow for CIM training, is a big proponent of short, steep hill sprints. I’ll write another blog post on why later. When I got home I did about 5 minutes of planking (2.5 min forearm plank, 45 sec side planking on each side).

Thursday: 

AM: P90X3 Yoga. This was harder than I remember it being before. Definitely a bit out of shape still.

PM: Track workout! I met up with my friend Amy who is faster than me (she was a collegiate runner and used to be WAYYY faster than me when we first joined the Vavi run club together in 2011 and now I’m happy to say she’s just a little faster than me!) to do a track workout. We warmed up for just over a mile and then did 4 x 800 + 2 x 400 with a full loop around the track for recovery. We cooled down and called it a day after that for a total of 5.7 miles of running. The 800s were fast – not as fast and I know I could have done a month and a half ago leading up to RnR, but a good indication that I haven’t lost a lot of speed.

800 paces (listing paces because each split was a little different in terms of distance):

1. 6:36
2. 6:28
3. 6:48
4. 6:34

I could feel myself losing some energy on that 3rd 800 but picked it up for the final one. For the 400s that followed the 800s, Amy encouraged me to beat my pace. I told her what I had been running pace wise and she challenged me to run a 6 min/mile for the 400s. I told her I couldn’t’ imagine running that fast but I would try. We started together and I tried my HARDEST to keep up with her. I remember glancing down and seeing a pace of 5:45 and thinking there was no way but I just kept going hard.  So hard in fact I felt super nauseous when I finished the lap! But I was HAPPY to see I ran the 400 at a 5:58 pace. I have never run an interval with a pace in the 5s so this was a huge accomplishment! She then challenged me to beat my pace for the final 400 and I did, finishing the 400 at a 5:57 pace. It is pretty incredible how motivating a fast friend can be during a track workout!

Friday: 

AM: P90X3 “The Challenge.” This is definitely one of the hardest P90X3 workouts. It’s 8 sets of pull-ups alternating with 8 sets of push-ups. You’re supposed to pick a number for each and keep to it for the entire workout. I picked 15 push-ups and 10 pull-ups and was able to hold it. At the end there is a 2.5 minute “burn out” session where you are supposed to alternate pull-ups and push-ups but instead I just alternated between holding a forearm plank and side planks because I wasn’t sure I had the strength to do even one more push-up!

Saturday: 

In the morning I ran 10 miles in Zone 2 with Mike and Jeremy. We kept it easy and luckily although it was warm, it was still gloomy at the coast.

As soon as I was finished with the run, I ate a quick breakfast and headed over to Asia’s parents house to start setting up for her bridal shower! Asia’s wedding is black tie and the colors are gold, black and ‘sparkle’ so the theme of the shower followed suit. I decided to throw a cocktail themed showed so we held it from 3-6 p.m. and served cocktails and horderves. Everything went perfectly and it was a beautiful shower and incredibly fun!

Sunday: 

After an incredibly busy and long week, I was so happy to get 11 solid hours of sleep on Saturday night. I woke up refreshed and feeling great on Sunday. I had 2 more workouts to get in to complete a week of P90X3 (P90X3 is actually 6 workouts a week but I am skipping the primarily cardio/leg based workout each week and replacing it with a speed workout or tempo run).

After coffee, I did P90X3 Triometrics and P90X3 Total Synergistics, back to back. Triometrics is a play on plyometrics – each move is 60 seconds long and is broken into 3 levels of intensity. There is a lot of squatting and lunging in this workout and I was sweating buckets by the end of the 30 minutes. Total Synergistics is a full body workout which rotates between an upper body move, lower body move and abdominal move, all of which really work the entire body but focus on that one part. I felt strong after these workouts!

Weekly Totals: 

• Total Miles Ran: 25.1
• Hours Strength: ~2.75
• Swimming/Biking: 0
• Total Time: ~7.75 hours