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Only five more weeks to go until marathon day. This past Saturday was my longest “long run” to date at 18 miles. Definitely a hard effort and I was quite sore the next day. No more slacking! With work, and our projects and renovations at home, I have cut back on the other forms of exercise I normally do like yoga, spin, cross training and pilates…at the very least you’d think that I would follow my running schedule…
Week of April 6-12:
Sunday: Rest
Monday: Rest
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: Rest
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Rest
Not exactly what I’d call an exemplary week…womp womp! We went to see the cherry blossoms on Saturday so I had every intention of pushing my long run to Sunday. It was the first day of flip flop season for me and I should have known better. We walked for at least 5 miles, me in flip flops, and had to hustle a few of those miles to make it to dinner on time. I had no idea that flip flops use very different muscles than walking in non-flip flops…needless to say, I did not end up doing any type of long run that weekend.
Week of April 13- April 19:
Sunday: Rest
Monday: Run 5 miles (easy effort)
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: Run 4 miles (hard effort)
Thursday: Rest
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Run 11 miles (long run)
I have been catching up on my Runner’s World magazines and re-reading certain articles of interest. There was an interesting one in the January issue on “brain training” and how it’s a myth that “mental toughness” comes naturally and how we must train our brains like we train our bodies.
I’ve heard that before…supposedly your mind will give up much quicker on a physical task than your body. The article had some interesting ideas on how to work some mental training into your runs. I applied some of the tips on wednesday (hard run) and Saturday (long run) and to a certain point it is a mental game. I’ll have to see how this new thinking serves me in the rest of my training but still feeling motivated and I swear that reading Runner’s World makes me feel more like a runner…even on the weeks that I don’t do a single run 😉
Have a great week, everyone!
