M2B Marathon Training Week 6 – The Best Training Week Yet

Week 6 was the BEST. I got my mojo back. I’ve been illness-free for 3 weeks straight, I’ve been running decent mileage, my speed is coming back and I’ve been getting a good amount of 21 Day Fix workouts per week. I am BACK!!! I was seriously considering dropping to the half marathon just a few weeks ago and now I’m back on board with the full marathon. Yes, it’s going to hurt. Yes, I could fail. But the journey is worth it. I’m enjoying the training and FINALLY seeing progress.

I think it’s been hard for me to fall back in love with running after having Siena because I have felt like my training has hit so may speed bumps. And even though my body may LOOK like I did before I had Siena, my running was not the same. But, if I’m honest, I didn’t put the effort into training for the New York Marathon like I have over the last few months. And that’s fine too. But the result was that I wasn’t getting my speed back. And the part of running that gets me hooked is making progress, getting faster and seeing how far I can push my body. When that was all gone, I wasn’t sure if I really even loved running as much as I thought I did, if I’m honest.

But, running has me hooked again.

Before we get into that, I need to announce the winner of the Craft Classic free entry! The winner was NERISSA! Nerissa, I’ll be contacting you to let you know and get you hooked up with a discount code. Thanks to everyone who participated. I hope you’ll use the discount codes to sign up for the race:

FATALE5K – $5 off Craft Classic 5K

FATALEHALF – $10 off Craft Classic Half Marathon

On to the weekly recap!

Monday: 8 mile treadmill run with 4 x 5 minute tempo intervals. The rest intervals on this workout descended from 1200 meters down to 400 meters which made it interesting. Tempo runs on the treadmill are always a little easier becuase you can kind of set the pace and zone out (and watch Scandal in my case). I set it for 7:30 pace (1% incline) and got through them. It didn’t feel that bad! Becuase my mother in law watches Siena on Monday mornings, my coach and I agreed that Mondays would be my mid-week long run days. However, Mondays also need to be tempo run days since speed workout is Wednesday nights (in the past I’ve done Tuesday/Thursdays for hard workouts), so basically my mid week long run will also be a tempo run, making it even harder.

Tuesday: I got up early and met Kelly at 5:45 AM for a 5 mile easy run. Jim told me the beginning of this run would probably feel a bit tough given the workout the day before but that I should feel pretty good but the end. If not, I should tell him because we may need to scale back on Mondays. The good news is, I felt good!

Later in the day I got in ABC Fix, which is a new (to me) 21 Day Fix workout. It’s one of the bonus workouts and I really liked it! It alternates between lower body and abs. I’ll definitely be including this one. It felt good becuase it was challenging but not too intense so that my legs would be super sore (unlike Lower Fix Extreme which is really hard!).

Wednesday: Upper Fix during the day and then an amazing group speed workout that night. This was by far the hardest group speed workout we’ve done so far, 8.25 miles total including: 

2 mile w/u

4 x 1 mile @ 5k-10k pace (Actual paces: 7:07, 7:12, 7:09, 7:10) with 4 min recovery between

8 minutes alternating 30 seconds @ 10k pace, 30 seconds at goal marathon pace (this one was kind of hard to zone in on the actual pace since we changed so frequently, sometimes my marathon race pace was 8:20 and sometimes it was 7:40. Need to work on that!). Jim said this final piece would really increase my V02 Max. This is a prime example of why I have a coach! I would NOT have done a workout this hard (or complex) on my own. I ran all 4 miles with a group of 3 other people and we all pushed each other to run faster which was fun!

Thursday: 45 minute recovery run on the trails near my house. Unfortunately after my intense workout the night before (which had me wired so I couldn’t fall asleep til past 11), Siena was up for 2 whole hours in the night. This is unusual for her (though she has been crying in her sleep a lot lately which wakes us up almost every night lately…) and it was not exactly the best night to happen given how important that night of sleep was for my recovery. I ended up scrapping my plans to do pilates.

Friday: Pilates Fix. I had planned to do Dirty 30 (a full body strength training workout) but decided to do Pilates that I missed on Thursday instead to give myself a break for the big long run.

Saturday: 18.6 HILLY miles. Another reason why having a coach is good for me – I would NEVER, NEVER have done this run on my own. I used to run from Moonlight Beach either north or south along the coast for every single long run. The elevation gain of that run is probably 100-200 feet depending on the direction (and I’d avoid Torrey Pines always). This run was the equivalent of running up and down Torrey Pines FIVE TIMES – 1,600 feet of climbing! It was hard. We ran on flat ground for maybe 1-2 miles of the entire run. There are a lot of Boston runners in my group so this was a good training run for them. Its as also good for us at Mountains 2 Beach due to the rolling hills at the beginning of the course and the net decline overall. I finished this run strong with major runner’s high. This was an incredible confidence boosting workout. My overall pace was modest but was actually a faster pace overall than the flat 16 miler I did 2 weeks before.

Sunday: I went for a 45 minute walk in the morning with a friend after we grabbed coffee and then opted for a nap instead of yoga that afternoon. My first rest day in over 3 week was deserved!

Weekly Totals: 

• Miles Run: 44 
• Hours of Strength Training: 1.5

I finished this week out tired but feeling accomplished. It was a great week of training and I’m feeling confident that I can make a lot more progress in the 12 weeks to go until race day.

Do you avoid hills like the plague on long runs like I usually do?