Marathon Prep Week 2

So... Week 2 didn't go quite as smoothly as Week 1 but here it is...

Sunday 11/6 - Rest. Worked all day.

Monday 11/7 - 3 easy miles on the Monon. This is where I was glad I had a training schedule. Usually I feel like I should run at least 5-6 miles every time I go out. However, since the schedule said I ONLY had to do 3, I did 3 and felt good about it.

Tuesday 11/8 - 5 miles. Averaged 8:49 pace. It was Run Club night. Almost everyone else had run the Monumental Marathon on Saturday so it was basically a shake out run. I was happy to keep up with the fast kids on their "shake out" run. Their warm up pace is my marathon pace. We went out for beers afterwards. There I figured out I had 10-20 years on about all the girls in that group. Ok, now I don't feel quite that bad about not keeping up with them... but heck, I want to run with them someday anyway!

Wednesday 11/9 - 14 miles. I looked at my work schedule and was afraid I wasn't going to get a long run worked in this week unless I did it today. I decided to run it around my house on the county roads but didn't get out until after 4 pm. Overall, it was a great run. Everything was going smoothly except that with 6 miles to go, the sun sank over the horizon. With 3 miles to go, it was completely dark. The darkness wasn't a big deal because there was almost a full moon and I could see perfectly well in the moonlight. The problem was that I was out with no lights and absolutely no reflection on a county road with no lights and no shoulder. I knew for a fact that I couldn't be seen. That combo led to a hair-raising last couple miles... with me scrambling up embankments, diving into waist high brush, or climbing down ravines every time a car came by. At one point I was in waist high grass when I noticed that my next step seemed to be into some dark abyss, and stopped myself right before I fell 10 feet into a drainage ditch. Instead, I stood where I was and climbed back onto the roadway as soon as the oncoming car passed. I was ecstatic to get within a half mile of my house where I could run through people's yards if I had to. Got done at 6:22 pm. Who'd a thunk it would be so dark at 6 pm? With all that, I ended up averaging 10:03 pace. I had no idea how cut up my legs were until I got in the shower and the water hit me.

Thursday 11/10 - Rest. This was either going to be a rest day or a swim day. I woke up with an uncomfortable pressure in both my knees. This happens every now and then when I run longer than I'm used to. I decided my body needed some rest. That pressure sensation didn't leave my knees until evening. Then I went to work for 12 hours.

Friday 11/11 - Zero miles. I had two more runs left on my schedule - a 3 miler and a 7 miler. However, I did not recover well from my night shift. For a whole laundry list of reasons I only got 3 hours of sleep after I got home. Pretty much felt awful, then had to go back to work for another 12 hours.

Saturday 11/12 - Zero miles. Got home from work in the morning and got a bit more sleep. Woke up around noon, ran some errands with my older daughter, then had to go back to sleep so, basically, spent the day recovering from the last two days sleep-wise and didn't get any running in. Glad I got my long run in earlier in the week, otherwise it would not have happened!

Week 2 Total Miles: 22