Marathon Training: Week 17 Recap

17 down, 1 to go! I guess time flies when you're having fun, but really, I feel like I just started doing these recaps. But here we are, less than a week until race day. Who's excited??? Last week was kind of screwy, but you'll be happy to know I did not run more than I was supposed to. I actually read the training schedule, then chose to ignore it. Hal's runs in pink, mine in purple.

MONDAY: Rest / Rest.

TUESDAY: 4 miles / Cross train. I did Jillian Michael's No More Trouble Zones. She kicks butt. She makes me feel like I kick butt.

WEDNESDAY: 3 miles / 4 miles. Okay, wait. I wrote in my running journal 4 miles, but then I wrote a time of 43:34 and wrote "holla!" next to it. I'm ghetto like that. But, 43:34 is terribly slow for me... so I'm guessing maybe I really ran 5. I think 5 miles in 43:34 deserves a holla... but not 4. I really don't remember that far back. Whatev.

THURSDAY: 4 miles / 3 miles. It was raining, so I ran on the treadmill. I guess I'm going to have to get used to running inside since winter decided to show up early.

FRIDAY: Rest / 8 miles. Due to the extremely crappy weather, Brooke and I couldn't find a time that worked for both of us to get our last long run in together... so I had to do this one alone. :( In my running journal I just scribbled "8 cold". My fingers were frozen. I'm not ready for this weather!

SATURDAY: 8 miles / Rest. Road trip to Hays... no time for exercise. But I did have two lunches. :)

SUNDAY: Cross / Rest. Road trip home from Hays. Just the one lunch today.

TOTAL MILEAGE: 19 / 15... maybe 16

Oh my goodness. The next time you get one of these recaps it will be the marathon recap. I can't believe how quickly these 18 weeks have flown by! I really appreciate everyone who has followed my training and left encouraging comments and cheered me on. You guys rock!

***Marathon Training Tip of the Week: Write it down! I love love love my running journal. It is The Complete Runner's Day-By-Day Log 2009 Calendar and it has a space to write about your run, when & where, distance, and comments. Mine usually just says the distance and the time if I wore my Garmin. And sometimes I'll write something like "holla!" or "sucked" which pretty much sums up the run. I'm not big on details. After 3 weeks of tapering you start to get all these thoughts in your head like, "Did I run enough? Did I train hard enough? Am I going to be ready?" Then you can pick up your running journal and flip through the pages to see that you logged a lot of miles. A lot of long miles. You can see that you ran 20 instead of 19 one week because you felt so good. You can see that in the last 17 weeks you've logged 461 miles. Seeing it in writing will quiet those voices.

And it will make you feel like a bad ass. Holla!