Marathon Madness Wednesday: Week 12

I am thrilled to report that my 18 miler on Sunday was fabulous. I really, really needed this to be a good training run as I was really starting to doubt myself. I know that I likely have some craptastic training runs ahead of me, but during those runs, I will think of this 18 miler, take a deep breath, and know that it's all going to be ok (and pray to God that I have a good day on the day of the marathon).

Interestingly enough, I actually ran these 18 miles about 2 minutes faster than I ran 17 a couple of weeks ago. That's pretty impressive/surprising. Granted, the conditions were horrible on the day of my 17 miler. It was still pretty warm when I did my 18 miles on Sunday, but not nearly as humid. Also, I got up at 4:30 so I could start running around 5:30 and that really seemed to help as well.

I thought it'd be interesting to do a mile-by-mile comparison. Well, I am using the word "interesting" loosely. I realize it's going to bore most of you to tears!

Ok, so my pace did begin to deteriorate a bit at the end, but I am still happy with it. Especially since my pace seemed to deteriorate as the temperatures warmed up... It should be significantly cooler when I run the marathon in October (fingers crossed).

The difference in how I felt between these two runs was like night and day. I definitely "hit my stride" on Sunday and had that "I could go on and on and on" feeling. I did NOT feel that way when I ran 17 miles earlier this month. I had to walk quite a bit that day... At the end of that run, I dumped a bottle of water over my head, in an effort to cool off and to disguise the tears that I thought might start falling... and I might have sort of collapsed onto the ground and laid in the fetal position... In a play ground area, by the way. Um, let's just say I got some strange looks.

This is a step-back week for me so my long run is only 13 miles this week, which sounds like a breeze. Training for a marathon definitely skews your perspective on what I consider a "long" run!!

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Training Tally:
Miles ran last week: 36
Training-to-date mileage: 311