Training recap! July 25-31

The week is over, and let me tell you, this one just flew by! Let’s break down the mileage day by day.

Monday July 25: 0 miles
Thunderstorm-inspired rest day! Usually I’d do a recovery run on Monday mornings with my coffee run group, but some nasty rain and loud thunder kept me in bed instead. Rainstorms in the evening then kept me in the house as well, so the run got bumped to Tuesday. But I DID manage to restart my core work on Monday! I have slacked on my core/stability work since April, so I’m trying to get back into the 3x/week routine.

Tuesday July 26: 5.5 miles (am), 2.5 miles (pm)
I did 5.5 easy miles in the morning, meaning to do 6 but the route didn’t quite work. But that was fine because I more than made up for it with my evening run, which was a warm-up and cool-down with two friends at an XC race. I ran this race 2 weeks ago but haaated it, so I just spectated again (as I’d done FOUR weeks prior) and cheerleaded the best I could.

I also managed to eat a piece of pizza while running the cool-down mile. I am a master of all things 😉

Wednesday July 27: 7.5 miles
A finally nice morning to run! Lower temperatures and lower humidity… easy run. 3.5-4 miles were on tow path (dirt and gravel) and the other miles were just getting to and from the canal. Trying to get lots of tow path practice under my shoes before Via, since 10.5 miles of the course is on tow path-like terrain on cinder/dirt path.

Thursday July 28: 6.6 miles (am), 7.4 miles (pm)
I had a great speedwork session with a running friend of mine, for whom my “tempo”/marathon pace is her easy peasy pace. For the second week in a row, I managed to keep my overall pace under 8 min miles, which is the best I can ask for on a 71F/95% humidity morning.

Evening run was with my Pacers store group. It was really humid, but we finally didn’t have to run in 90F temperatures, so I ran much faster than I have in the last few weeks at that group run: 8:07 pace instead of an 8:40+ pace. Felt so good!

Friday July 29: Rest day. Hallelujah!

Saturday July 30: 8 miles
This weekend and the first few days of next week are cutbacks for me because of Lady Time. I know I’ll be low energy and have heavy legs, so why push it? And boy was I glad for the cutback this weekend! Started at 7 am, and it was hot (mid-70s) and humid (~90%) and the sun was shining bright. Blegh.

Sunday July 31: 12 miles
This run defines the word slog. It was hot (73F to start at 6:00), humid (100% humidity, threatening or drizzling rain, so humid that it was foggy), and everything was damp and slippery. There were many walk breaks taken, one that was around 1/3 of a mile long. Just could not get my legs going.

However, those 12 miles DID knock my monthly mileage up to 220 for July, and 49.5 for the week. I’ll be back up in the 50s next week with my long weekend mileage that I have planned, so I didnt’sweat that precious .5 mile that set me out of the 50s game… at least not this week 😉

6 weeks to the day until Marathon #5: Lehigh Valley Via Marathon! Getting nervous about the weather, but hoping to get some good training in before the taper starts!