Weekly Workouts – countdown is on

As you read this, I have just one week left until the big event – the Glass City Marathon! Race week is always very exciting around Toledo and I like to get involved. I have a busy week planned with a few special events coming up… including my birthday! Woohoo, 54 years young. There are also several race related events going on, and the “419” day (our area code). I finished up my week of training with 35 miles of running. I didn’t feel especially “strong” or “ready” and I had a mystery foot concern. Welcome to taper time, right?

Sorry to disappoint, but I did not end up taking that bath on Sunday!  The sun came out and I decided to spend my time out biking instead of soaking.  It was a bit chilly on my bike ride (55 degrees) but I was looking forward to trying out my new Garmin Edge.  I programmed a route to go see my son refereeing soccer.  The Edge was really cool because it automatically rerouted my map when I went off course and picked a different road to go on.  My watch doesn’t do that!  I think I’ll really use that feature on my early morning rides in the summer.

Mon – 4 miles.  I got to run with my friend who is going to Boston!  It’s been a struggle for her this cycle and she is hanging on with a bit of an injury, but she’s going to Boston!!  I’m super excited for her as she has been my running friend for several years now.  We actually met when I was coaching the 5K program and she was in my group.  Best of luck to her for a great race day and hopefully she gets through it with a smile when she crosses that finish line!

Tues – 5 miles.  This should have been a “track” workout, but at this point I’m not interested in doing anything speedy.  The top of my foot has been feeling weird since Sunday.  I’m hoping it’s just the niggles because I can’t think of any reason why it should be complaining.  I’m icing it when I can and crossing my fingers!  The weather was very pretty this morning with some fog lingering.

My lunch hour was spent doing weights.  It was a beautiful day so I moved my workout to the sunroom to enjoy the view.

Also, my WFH attire has really relaxed… doing a hair mask and wearing a t-shirt.  Certainly not “office ready” as my company was hoping, but what the heck, no one uses video on our Teams calls anymore, so I think it’s just fine 🙂  Fun fact of the week – I actually ran errands and went to the dentist office with the hair mask product still in my hair.  Not sure anyone even noticed. I have been using the Olaplex products since January. They are worth the $$!

Later in the day I even got to go outside and work, while painting my toenails.

Weds – Rest day!  I dislike the “resting” part of the taper week.  My mind just churns with thoughts of “did I train enough?”, “did I do the right things?”  One thing that takes my mind off of it is volunteering!  I picked up our shirts.  Nice design!

Thurs – 9 miles, 8:50 pace.  I’ve been considering what my race day plan should be.  Stick with the 4:00 pace group?  Or do my usual thing (go fast, burn out!)? Today I thought I’d run 9:05 for the first 4 miles, then go to 8:55ish or faster.  But no, I kept hitting 8:45 for my paces. No kidding, my race shoes just want to run faster and today I was not feeling the endurance to keep up with it!  I’m not going to try to find excuses why I couldn’t keep up (it was windy!).  I was out of breath several times on this run and had to stop.  Meh.  Some days are like that.

If you follow me on Instagram you’ll see that I’ve started a 10 day countdown of my 10 years of racing at the Glass City marathon. I’ve run 5 fulls and 5 halves there. It’s been fun to look back at these races and show off my race shirts!

Fri – 5 easy miles.  Running was a little better today.  I did stop by the PT yesterday to look at my foot and OUCH, he hurt me!  He actually hurt both of my feet while checking them out, so three wasn’t a lot of difference on the “odd” foot.  He said I’ll live.  Nothing exciting about this run, but I was feeling a little achy overall.  Ugh on the taper week. At night we went to a local brewery. I think we know someone every time we go here and tonight was no exception.

Sat – 12 miles, long run.  I wasn’t feeling achy, but I wasn’t feeling quite as energized as I had hoped.  I know long runs are supposed to be slow, but I often want to just run “by feel” instead of purposely stalking my watch and slowing down.  I did have a lot of thoughts about my pacing plan on this run!  

Sun – Rest day! Happy Easter to those who celebrate! I convinced my daughter to spend the night on Saturday so we could enjoy some donuts on Sunday. Delicious ham dinner with my parents on our schedule too. I hope the next week brings me a lot of rest which make me feel invincible (or at least not sloth like. haha!)

Need some more inspiration? I’m linking up with Deborah at Confessions of a Mother Runner and Kim from Running on the Fly for their Weekly Run Down. Check out all of the fun blogs there!

Good news: I’ve got a great website to share with you – OnTheGoMap I found this when I needed a super simple way to figure out how far a route was. It works great on my phone! I did see you could export the GPX and then you could import that into Garmin, but if you are just looking for an easy “how far is it?” kind of thing, give it a try. Easy peasy!!

Bad news: Early race day forecast is for a low of 60 (!!) and a high of 81 (!!!). I will melt. We do start at 6:30am, but still, we’ve trained for 16 weeks in cold Ohio weather! Uggggh.