Marathon Training -- week 3

Sometimes you gotta leave the SuperWoman cape at home.

Week 3 started with my husband out of town and ended with my boss out of town. It was an exhausting week with lots of stress that affected every area of my life, including marathon training. I managed to have a few good runs, but didn't hit my "must-do" workout of the week.

Summary:

Monday -- Knowing my husband wouldn't be in town until Monday night, I adjusted my schedule to make Monday morning an easy cross-training day. In actuality, I wouldn't even call it cross-training. It was a little bit of light stretching before the kids woke up. Better than nothing.

Tuesday -- My training plan called for 6 miles, with the last 3 miles faster than the first 3. As of 5:00 a.m. when I woke up, there were a few tiny green blips on the weather radar, which didn't phase me. When I left my house at 6:00, the sky was looking pretty dark and ominous. Less than a half mile into my run, the bottom dropped out. Rain was coming down sideways and the lightning was everywhere. I ducked into a shelter, checked the radar again on my iPhone, and discovered that those little green blips had merged into a decent-sized storm with lots of red & yellow. I turned around and ran back to my car. I ran again after dinner Tuesday night. Running after sundown is completely different than running before sunrise. I was worried about the increased traffic. It's tourist season here, and I wondered how many drivers had been drinking or were otherwise distracted. Maybe all that worrying gave me a big adrenaline boost, because I ran much faster than usual and it felt great. I didn't run very far, but each mile was faster than the one before it. It really was fun.
Summary  (total for both attempts): 4.63 miles at 8:54 pace.

Wednesday -- Instead of running an easy 4 miles, I ran 5 and picked up speed for the last 2 miles. Lots of wind on Wednesday, which helped me pick up speed at the end (9:08 pace for the last miles), but really made for a struggle in the beginning. Summary: 5 miles at 9:34 average pace.

Thursday: Cross-training -- Cardio Kick-Boxing DVD.  Not my cup of tea. Boss went out of town on Thursday, and the stress at work went through the roof.

Friday: Ahhh, I love easy Friday morning runs. No pressure on the pace, just enjoying the scenery and the rhythm of the run. This was a lovely, calming start to what turned out to be an extremely tough day. Summary: 4.72 miles at 9:29 pace.

Saturday: I intended to run 15 miles, with the middle 5 miles at my goal marathon race pace. I procrastinated getting out the door, and half a mile in I was hating the run. I couldn't get my mind off work issues, my breathing was shallow, and I felt absolutely drained. Sometimes it takes me a couple of miles to get into the groove, so I decided to see how I felt at 2.5 miles. Still miserable, and dreading the faster pace that was coming up. I turned around at 2.5 and headed back toward my car. I didn't make the final decision to call it quits until around mile 4.5. I figured I had enough of a window Sunday morning to get in my full run before my husband left for work, and hopefully a day away from the office would be enough to get my running zen back. Unfortunately, when I woke up on Sunday, there were scary storm clouds in the sky, and by the time they passed, the window of opportunity had passed. It was disappointing -- the long run was the one marked as a "do-it-no-matter-what" workout on my training plan. I'm not sure if I should have kept going on Saturday or if that would have left me too drained to fully participate in Girls Day Out with my daughter that afternoon. I plan on running this one next weekend, instead of the slightly shorter long run on my plan.

Total mileage: 19.35. Hoping Week 4 will be much better!