Marathon Training: Week 3 Recap

Just like last week; pink is the scheduled workout and purple is the workout my lazy butt decided to do.

MONDAY: Rest Day / 4 Miles at an easy (slow!) pace. This run was really hard. It did not feel good.

TUESDAY: 3 Miles / 3 Miles hills with Brooke. Again, I was not feeling the run! Usually we do a longer run, but I was so glad we ended after only doing 3.

WEDNESDAY: 5 Miles / Rest Day. My body is tired!

THURSDAY: 3 Miles / 5 Miles. I took Ari out for 3 miles, then circled back home. It took everything in me to get back out and finish the last two miles of my run. My legs were screaming!

FRIDAY: Rest Day / Rest Day. Yep, I needed it.

SATURDAY: 6 Miles / 6 Miles. I was definitely in need of a short long run! Especially since my favorite runner in women's clothes was not on the trails this morning! And thank goodness Brooke is always up for Einstein Brothers after a long run. Sometimes that's all that gets me through the run!

SUNDAY: Cross-Training / 30 minutes bike. Boring! I was at the gym with one other person!!! And what's up with 24 Hour Fitness closing at night on the weekends now??? I'm pretty sure you have to change the name now... very misleading.

Total Mileage: 17 / 18

So this was a "step-back" week in our training program. The purpose of this decrease in mileage every 3 weeks is to prevent injury and burnout. I clearly needed it as this was like the worst week of running ever! I think it may have to do with the fact that I haven't been sleeping enough lately. So my goal is to get a full 8 hours every night this week and see if it helps at all. Hopefully!!! Running is not fun when it feels like crap.

Marathon Diet/Nutrition... hmmm... how do I say this? I guess I'll just say it. I ate an obscene amount of granola this week. Seriously. I made a whole pan of granola bars on Monday and on Thursday Drew went to get one after work and freaked out when I confessed I'd eaten them all. There were kind of a lot! I guess I could be over-eating worse things, but granola isn't exactly low-cal. Delicious, but not low-cal.

***Marathon Training Tip of the Week: Get the Stink Out!!! I've had several people (okay, like 2) ask about this... Do I do laundry every day? How do you get that lovely sweat smell out of your running clothes? What's the deal with Dry Wick? Um, no I don't wash my running clothes after every run. That seems a little OCD, a problem I definitely don't have. But if you've ever worn technical running clothes (dry wick), then you know they really hold onto smells. They actually have some new laundry detergents made specifically for running clothes. I've seen it at Gary Gribble's, but never really at WalMart or anything. Anyways, it seems pretty expensive for my Target dry-wick running tanks. Here's a little trick I use; I put about a half cup of white vinegar into my wash. Now that I have my fancy pants new HE washer, I put the vinegar into the spot for fabric softener, but you can just toss it in with your detergent at the beginning if you have a regular washer. It takes the sweat smell out and the vinegar smell totally dissappears when the fabric dries. It also acts as a fabric softener. Another tip, don't use fabric softener on your dry-wick running clothes! It reduces the effectiveness of the technical fabric and pretty soon your fancy running shirt won't be wicking sweat away at all. Try the vinegar and you'll be running stink free and dry!