Week in Review

63 miles
1 Double
2 Workouts
0 Long Runs

As I perused Facebook today, I saw that all of my friends either hit triple digit mileage weeks or at least came very close to that.  I did not.  Of course, after the initial disappointment in my measly 60-something mileage week faded, I realized why I had a lower mileage week and my self pity party ended. Why?  Because whenever I visit Garrett, time becomes very precious and priorities shift. For example, a typical baseball schedule goes something like this:

• Be at field (in 105 degree heat) for baseball game from 4-10:30PM
• Eat with Garrett from 10:30PM-11:30PM
• Shower and hang out from 11:30-12:30AM
• Sleep and wake up at 10:00AM

As you can tell, the schedule above isn't very conducive to summer running because going to bed at 1AM and waking up at 5AM to beat the heat don't really mix so well.  I only get 5-6 hours to spend with Garrett during the day, and considering that these are the only two days I'll see him over the course of four months, those are some very precious hours.  So precious that leaving to run for 2.5 hours is the last thing I wanted to do...so I didn't.  In fact, every time that I visit Garrett in season, my running numbers plummet so drastically that I should know by now that trying to hit my mileage targets is most likely never going to happen. So, all of that to say that I didn't do my 16 mile long run this morning as Mark had outlined on my training plan.  To my defense, this long run was the least important of my three workouts this week, so this was the one to skip.  As much as I would love to pretend that I'm a professional runner, I am not, and for that reason life sometimes gets in the way--whether it's spending quality time with loved ones, staying late at work to meet a deadline, or getting sick.  While running brings me so much joy, sometimes it takes a lower priority because it isn't the end-all, be-all in my life.

Enough about that--in more exciting news, I got a new training plan from Mark Hadley to take me through Philly.  I've got some big goals for Philly and I want to play my cards right this time, so I'm really trying to adjust some major things:

1. Actually finish my workouts.  How will I do that?  I'll actually run closer to my marathon pace.  I typically try to PR in all of my workouts.  What I've realized is that for marathon training, it's not necessarily about running as fast as you possibily can for as long as possible.  Instead, it's more about making your marathon pace (or 5-10 seconds faster than your marathon pace) feel as easy, relaxed and comfortable as possible. I want 5:50-6:00 pace to feel like a walk in the park, so I'll need to actually slow some of my key workouts down to ensure I finish them all.
2. Shorten the distance in my speed workouts.  Instead of trying to hit 5-6 miles of quality speed work, I'm not only going to hit 4 miles.  This is because I typically feel great on one workout, feel like shit on the next, and mediocre on the third...and the cycle repeats.  I'd rather feel great on all three and the key to this will be to reduce the amount of miles I'm trying to post some fast time on.
3. Run more doubles.  I want to finally hit the upper 90s or even the triple digits this time around, and that usually means more doubles to run!  While this will be a slight adjustment, it really won't be too terrible as it's just a couple of miles here or there.

I'm really excited to execute my training plan into a reality (of course, next week since I skipped my long run this week).