Five Days

Aaaaaah, it’s marathon week.  At this point, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.  The hip issue is slowly becoming less of one.  I’m a little worried about the lack of training but at this point, the hay is in the barn.  Nothing I can do now but lace up my shoes and go run 26.2 miles (and probably a little more since I think the course is long).

Two cool things about it already:

I have one of the best bib numbers ever: 1111.  Isn’t that lucky?

Also, Zliten and I joked that at least we’d have a shot at winning our own name divisions – and we’re the only ones with our first names.  So, all we have to do is finish to win.  I’ll tuck that away for around mile 22.

Just a few more very short workouts, lots of sleep, hopefully not much stress, and we hit the road Friday at noon.  It’s all happening!

Training:

You know it was one of those weeks when the post-long-run beer selfie is the closest to a training picture you have…

This week was weird.  Monday and Tuesday were the shittiest training days I’ve had in a while.  Monday I explained in detail here, but Tuesday was the aftermath.  Zliten convinced me that the treadmill would be better for us to tempo, and I decided to give it a try.  For me, it was not.

My hip was still feeling gross and it just had no power.  The constant speed of the treadmill was not working for me.  I tried to get started running about 3 times and gave up within half a mile each time to go roll, stretch, and the last time, have a small hissy fit outside about it.  The good news is that it was so cold and windy, that tantrum was short lived, and I decided that at least I was getting my fucking steps in for the day and walked at 2% incline at 3.5 for about 30 minutes.

Thursday’s run still had my hip feeling a little weak, but I was able to complete a 4 mile run with some speed segments in it, and things felt pretty great after.  I also started to figure out the new normal with how my body is right now, and do some strategerie on how to pull the best run I can out of these legs.

The first thing is not to try to keep up with anyone or anything.  Trying to keep pace with my husband is an exercise in frustration right now, so I’m not going to do it.  I will let him go at any time I need to.  If I’m having a good day, I might catch him later and get to motivate him through the last few miles, perhaps.

The second thing is that during this race, more than any other race I’ve ever done, I need to watch my form.  I cannot slump or I will cramp SO EARLY.  I need to stay easy up the hills or I will cramp SO EARLY.  I need to keep my cadence high and strides shorter, especially if my hip is cranky.

The third thing is to let go of any expectations.  The watch can say anything it wants, the time that passes can be anything it needs to be, I just want to let go and run through the woods for 5 hours, give or take.

Here’s the breakdown from last week…

• Monday: hour 45 min easy group ride with BSS (weather permitting), core
• Tuesday: 1 mile warmup, 4 mile tempo, .5-1 mile cooldown a little running, a lot of walking, and a whole lot of tantrum throwing
• Wednesday: swim at lunch, core PM
• Thursday: 3×1600 (9-9:30 min/mile) with 400m recovery, 1 mile warmup and cooldown 4 mile fartlek
• Friday: off, core
• Saturday: 10 mile run, last 5 at race pace.
• Sunday: riding bikes, either inside or outside for at least 20 30 mins + core + long sunset walk

And here’s the plan this week:

• Monday: run to the track, 4×400 with 400 recovery in between, run home, core
• Tuesday: 20-30 min trainer ride
• Wednesday: 3 miles at marathon pace, core
• Thursday: 15-20 minute swim
• Friday: off, some walking to keep the legs loose
• Saturday: 26.2 baby!
• Sunday: offseason begins!

…and while I’m getting pretty excited to race in FIVE DAYS, I’m also pretty pumped for my offseason plans.

Food/Scale:

A delicious picture of noms in progress…

Let’s keep this short.  I’m doing ok with my (fairly relaxed) goals, but the scale is definitely not going anywhere.  I’m alright with this, because in a couple weeks, this section of my life will be in focus and I’ll start chipping away at those numbers on the scale.

You can only have so many hards at once, and once training takes a back burner, this will become my main project. Tracking 100% of the time (yeah, even on weekends), and much more stringent calorie goals.

• Track as much as I can.  100% is great.
• Booze cannot interfere with bedtimes, calorie counts, or workouts.  I think this should just be the motto for the year.
• Try not to eat like an asshole.  Balance in all things.

For now, though, you get a story about my backyard.

We’ve owned a well loved grill and smoker for about 8.5 years.  It’s actually so amazingly seasoned that even just grilling something would make it taste as if it’s been lightly smoked, which is AWESOME.  We’ve been holding off getting a new one as long as we could, because it’s a lot of work to break it in, but the hole in the old grill got so bad it wouldn’t heat up… so we now have this lovely thing of beauty pictured above.

Zliten is attempting to put it through it’s paces, so we had a meat-a-ganza on Saturday.  There was a giant piece of brisket, a rack of ribs, chicken breasts, and some habenero chicken sausage.  The chicken and sausage were instant hits, and we learned some (delicious, delicious) lessons on how to make the ribs and the brisket better.

For the week, I have some great meals – chicken, chicken sausage and cauli-taters, shepard’s pie with brisket, ribs with (light) blue cheese and (not light) bacon potato salad, and I made zuppa toscana to go with salad.  We’re set.

The theme of this week is: don’t do anything stupid, which includes eating and drinking.

• Booze cannot interfere with bedtimes or calorie counts.  Booze also goes away for the week around Tuesday or Wednesday (and obviously keeping the consumption responsible if I do choose to imbibe on race week).
• Eat like a normal human until Thursday.
• Have a nice big (non-spicy, carb heavy) meal on Thursday night (the night before the night before, which also happens to be my birthday!).
• Come up with a plan for Friday (the day before) for optimal carbing up.
• Whatever we want after the marathon for a few days (I may be making my list because it is indeed my last hurrah for a while). 🙂

Life:

My goal in life is to have this much attitude.  Or, shall I say… catitude?

This week, it’s all about continuing the mellow.  I mean, all I had for this last week was…

• 8 hours sleep most every night
• Keep it mellow – do the relaxing thing instead of the crazy thing if faced with a decision.

And I pretty much nailed this.  I think I may have slept 6.5 hours Thursday night, but I made up for it with a zero alarm weekend and solid 10 hour sleep nights both Friday and Saturday.  We had a super relaxing but productive weekend.  We stayed in, we grilled, I read an entire book on Saturday, we binge watched Fuller House Sunday, but I also got a bunch of chores done and have more than enough food for this week since it’s a short one.

Let’s keep it going:

• 8 hours sleep every night (no exceptions)
• Dinner with family on Tuesday night.
• Be boring all week, including my birthday.  There will be plenty of time to play after the marathon.

And with that, it’s time to go back to making my way through the week. I’m kind of excited and ready for it to be race day, but I’m also excited about every extra day I have to get amazing rest, fuel, and hip healing mojo before I race.  It will get here soon enough!