These last two weeks of training were big ones! I remember going into week 10 thinking “Training has been going so well, it doesn’t even seem that hard. Maybe I’m not pushing hard enough?” and now I’m ending week 11 thinking “I’m tired, it must be working.”
At the end of week 9, I raced the Encinitas Half Marathon and at the end of week 10 I raced the Carlsbad 5000. I don’t have any other races on the schedule – M2B will be the big day! While part of me would love to PR in SOMETHING before race day to give me some confidence (I have not set a PR in nearly 2.5 years!), I know that it’s not smart to race anymore. There isn’t enough time and any race would be in the middle of tough training weeks anyway. Plus, the only distance I think I could reasonably PR at right now (other than a marathon of course) is the 10k and it seems silly just to seek out a 10k to race just so I can say I PRed!?
We have a lot of training to cover, so I’ll get down to it.
Week 10: March 27th – April 2nd
Monday: 21 Day Fix Yoga. Much needed the day after the half marathon!
Tuesday: ABC Extreme (core and lower body workout) in the morning and 6 miles easy on the treadmill later in the day.
Wednesday: Upper Fix Extreme in the morning and in the evening, 7 miles with 8 x 400. We started the group workout with a few hill repeats, but they weren’t super intense and the group was kind of goofing off so we didn’t go too hard. Overall this workout was meant to get us ready for the Carlsbad 5000 with some shorter intervals. I was happy that it wasn’t a very tough workout!
Thursday: 50 min recovery run. I did this on the trails and took it easy, walking up the hills, as usual.
Friday: Dirty 30 and 10 Min Fix for Abs. 
Saturday: 18 mile long run. As I explained in my Carlsbad 5000 race report, I skipped the group run and met up with a friend for this long run and she was pretty set on running in the mid 8s. After some inner debate given my coach said to run this easy, I went with it and we finished 18 miles at a pace of 8:34. Most of the time the effort was conversational, so it wasn’t crazy hard, but definitely less aerobic than I planned to run. But, it was really fun running with my friend and it was a confidence booster to run that far at a pace so close to race pace, so I’ll take it as a win!
Sunday: Carlsbad 5000 race plus warm-up, for 4.5 miles total.
Weekly Totals:
- Miles Run: 40
- Strength/Cross Training: 2 hrs 15 min
Week 11: April 3rd – April 9th
Monday: 6 miles easy. I was surprised by how easy this felt the day after the 5k and the hard 18 miler! My legs actually felt decent. I kept the pace easy but felt good. I also did 30 min of yoga – a new routine from the Beachbody on Demand Yoga Studio called Muscle Recovery, let by Ted, the guy who is in the P90X yoga videos. 
Tuesday: Lower Fix Extreme & 5 Min Core on the Floor (from Core de Force) in the early morning and later 10 miles easy. I was SO glad that my friend Ashley ran this with me because my legs were heavy and our pace was slow (close to 10 min/miles) and I would not have been very happy doing it alone. We plan to meet up every Tuesday for our mid-week long run, so that’ll be really fun!
Wednesday: 8 miles of speedwork with the running club. We did a warm-up and then ran 40 minutes up and down a hill, with 3 minutes hard, 1 min recovery, 3 min hard, 3 min recovery. Becuase M2B is a net decline, this served as some practice running hard downhill as well as strengthening our quads going up. After the hills, we headed back to the flat section for 3 x 800. We were instructed to do them at 1/2 pace, 10k pace and 5k pace, but it was starting to get dark so I couldn’t see my paces on my watch. The first two ended up being around 7:35 pace and the final one I just ran as hard as I could and its as 6:44 pace! This was a tough workout.
Thursday: Upper Fix Extreme and 6.2 miles easy. I did the math and realized my plan would get me to 49 miles for the week so I did one more mile than the plan said! I couldn’t resist! 
Friday: P90X3 Yoga. Mike and I did this together! So nice to get to do a workout with him. 
Saturday: 20 mile long run. The goal for this run was to do 15 easy and run the last 5 at close to race pace, but given the crazy route my coach gave us and how tired I was from the week prior, it just didn’t happen. I’d say over 50% of this was on trails, with some significant hills, and after a couple of hard weeks, I just didn’t have the energy to get to race pace in those final miles. Kelly ran with me for 14.5 so I was on my own for the final 5.5. I did pick up the pace at least, but not 8 min/miles.
Sunday: Rest day. I felt tired, I had a lot to get done during nap time and we went to a birthday party in the afternoon so it just seemed better to rest. Plus, as you can see, it was the first full rest day in a long time!
Weekly Totals:
- Miles Run: 50
- Strength/Cross Training: 2 hrs 5 min
If you read all of that – I’m impressed! I definitely need to get back to once a week recaps becuase they get really long! To sum it up for those who skimmed – these were two confident boosting weeks. Training is starting to intensity now and I am prioritizing rest as much as I can. 7 weeks til race day!
How is your training going? What is your favorite cross training activity?
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