8 - TWR 2 - Training Week Recap (3/27-4/2)

Finished up another big training week! As of 4/2, I’m 4 weeks out from my first marathon this year: the Eugene Marathon. Let’s review the workouts this week.

Total Run Mileage: 59.15mi / 95.19km

Format: (Planned / Actual); “” denotes that the workout was completed as planned

• Monday: Full Recovery Day / “”, cafe day, reading and blogging
• Tuesday: Easy 6 mi + Strength Maintenance / “”
• Wednesday: Easy 6 mi + 6x20s Stride / “” + 0.4 mi walk + calf work
• Thursday: 14 mi Midweek Long Run + Strength Maintenance / “”, but Strength Maintenance pushed to Sunday + hamstring work
• Friday: Easy 4 mi / “”
• Saturday: 16 mi Long Run Interval Workout / “” + 0.5 mi post-run walk
• Sunday: 12 mi 2nd Long Run / “” + Strength Maintenance + calf and hamstring work

Hopefully the above format is clear in communicating the planned vs. actual workouts of the week. At the start of each week, I review the plan for the week, and this pretty much becomes a backbone for how I plan my work and personal schedule. If I know I have other hard commitments, I might shift around some of the runs to accommodate those plans. Otherwise, I might make changes on the fly depending on what happens through the week.

Something standout about this week for me was that I actually stuck to the plan! I feel like with most weeks, I end up shuffling the workouts around a good bit. This often happens because something unplanned comes up. For this week I was pretty hard set on doing all the runs according to plan since my marathon’s coming up in a few weeks and this is pretty much the peak of this training cycle.

On the whole I feel really good about how this training week went. I was able to execute the workouts as planned and hit all my paces with appropriate effort. No paces felt too hard or too easy. So it feels like I’m kinda just chugging along with training. I say this realizing how much of a luxury it is to say that. In prep for my previous 2 marathons, I had sickness or injury come up, which impacted my ability to train and feel ready for the races.

This week I noticed myself saying several times that I was surprised I was able to do the longer workouts. I think I ought to have more confidence in myself. I also think that this is a sure sign that I am improving! It’s hard to realize that in the day-to-day. I’ve noticed my mindset has also adjusted to the increase in training. I feel a lot less mental friction when approaching my runs. For example, 12 mile Long Runs are starting to feel like business as usual. Wild.

Now to touch on a few topics that came up as I was planning my runs for the week:

Choosing between morning and night runs. Generally I now prefer morning runs. Several reasons. The weather is better—running feels easier when it’s cool than hot. This is the time of day where I’m (ideally) the most rested. It’s a way of serving myself before I serve others. Running early in the morning allows you to run fasted, which has some physiological benefits (I’ll detail this in a future post). And mentally, it’s often easier to swallow the pill of running a 14 mile long run in the morning than it is to dread about the run through a whole workday and then actually doing it after. I really enjoy the time right before sunrise. It’s so peaceful.

There are challenges that come with morning runs though. Running in the dark sucks. And it feels lonely sometimes. Morning runs often feel like having to hurriedly squeeze it in before the workday. This is usually solved by better planning.. easier said than done for me.

100% of the time, I’ll prefer morning runs. But sometimes I like to lay in bed a little longer, or I don’t feel super rested, or (insert whatever other reason). When that happens, evening runs are a decent fallback. Or just rescheduling within the week.

Logistical difficulty. Three long runs this week! Accounting for a short warm-up, the actual run itself, and some sort of cooldown like yoga or other exercise, these can easily be 3+ hour commitments. Now that I’m in mileage the range of 50-60 miles per week, I’m starting to really feel how demanding keeping up this routine can be. Hm, I guess I don’t have much else to say other than “it gets hard sometimes”. I do want to remind myself to give myself the grace to slip and modify the workouts if needed.

Running with other people. 99% of the time I run alone. It’s been that way since 2020. For me it’s mostly a mix of logistical ease, flexibility, and making sure I’m running the runs as I intend them. I noticed when I’ve run with large groups, I get a little peppy and excited and then run faster than I intend to. It’s also hard to convince people to casually join me for a run now that my runs are longer in length, both in distance and time.

Listening to music. I’m almost always listening to music when I run now. A large part of that is motivated by my desire to listen to more and more new music, and being out alone for an hour or more at a time is a good opportunity to get an album or two in. For my easy runs, I can listen to almost anything. I’ve managed to generally get away from that effect of music where you subconsciously find yourself running to the rhythm/BPM of the song. But for tempo efforts where I’m practicing my race pace, there’s one playlist I stick to, since my marathon and half marathon efforts sync up really well to that playlist.

But I’ve also started putting the music down for some of my runs. There was a point before in 2019 and 2020 where I would run with no music, and in those runs I could let my mind just wander or observe and soak in my surroundings. I kinda miss that, so I’m trying to find runs or pockets of time where I can do that. One good example from this week was during my 16 mi Saturday workout in between intervals. During the race effort miles, I had my playlist going, and then I would pause it and have silence during the rest/ periods.

Woo that was a good bit of stream of consciousness brain dump. I’ll call it here after dropping my plan for this upcoming week.

4/3-4/9 Planned

• Monday: Full Recovery Day
• Tuesday: Easy 10 mi + Strength Maintenance
• Wednesday: Easy 4 mi
• Thursday: 14 mi Midweek Long Run
• Friday: Easy 4 mi
• Saturday: 20 mi Long Run
• Sunday: Easy 4 mi

Lord have mercy.