Marathon Pre-Training, Final Week

This week's stats:

• 8.24 treadmill miles
• 3.00 outdoor miles
• 1 hours on elliptical machine
• 2 weightlifting sessions
• 1 pounds lost

Total pre-training stats:

• 15 weeks
• 108.10 treadmill miles
• 54.51 outdoor miles
• 24 pounds lost (@ 191)

It took a bit to get rested up from the trip to Arkansas, so we skipped the gym on Sunday.  Tuesday, though, I jumped right back in for Running Tuesday, and did well.  Wednesday we got back into our strength training, but as we were doing it I finally realized why I've been less than enthusiastic about the last few routines our trainer has worked out for us.  I'm not as big a fan of body-weight exercises.  First off, they're hard to quantify.  It's nearly impossible to tell if you're working harder one day than you did the previous day and it's a lot easier to slack off.  I like knowing that I should lift a certain number of pounds for a certain number of reps and being able to measure progress when I can add more weight.  Plus, I love that sore feeling after a tough weightlifting session, and I don't get that from just lifting my body weight.  I know I could if I "did it right," but apparently I don't do it right.  So we talked to our trainer on Friday and asked to go back to more traditional bodybuilding routines instead of playing with the stability balls and suspension trainer and such.  He's going to work with us twice more this coming week to put together three separate workouts we can do each week.  Yesterday we worked triceps and back, and I'm blissfully sore today.  It feels good.  I missed that feeling.

So today, as the last outdoor run/walk before training starts, I decided I wanted to do a time trial.  My intent was to go four miles, but there was some kind of huge gathering at the trailhead so we had to park farther up and get on the trail just past the 1 mile mark.  That meant walking about a mile from the car to the trail, so we cut it to three miles to make sure we had time to finish before our weekly lunch date with the family.  It was hot out, around 80 degrees, and sunny.  And humid.  I wanted to do four miles because if you start at the trailhead the one and two mile points are clearly marked on the pavement, meaning I could do the whole thing without glancing at the miCoach stats on my phone.  But since we started in the middle and I had to turn around after a mile and a half, I had to rely on the phone to tell me when to turn around.  I did, however, manage to keep myself from looking at my time until the end.  I hoped to run more of it than I did -- I'm sure I ran, cumulatively, around a quarter mile -- so I didn't feel like I was doing that well.  It was just so hot out, and I'm not fond of full sunlight, so it felt like trying to run in a sauna.  It turned into more a test of my walking speed than anything else.  I was confident I would end up with an average pace under 15:00 per mile, and I was hoping for 14:00.  When I got close to the end and took out my phone so I could stop the timer just as I hit the "finish line," I was shocked to see the time.  I finished at 39:53, for an average pace of 13:20.  Just over 4.5mph.  And that's primarily walking.

While that's faster than I have to go to finish the marathon in the given time, I know I still need to work on my average speed.  My 5k pace should be faster than that.  And I know I'll get there.  After all, 15 weeks ago the best I'd ever managed to average over a 3-6 mile distance was about 15:45 per mile, so I've achieved a HUGE improvement.  I've now got 20 more weeks to shave off more time, and just increasing my running stamina will do wonders.  At this point, then, I feel good to go.