Marathon training continues

Marathon training is officially moving forward.  Saturday’s long run was 12 miles, which I figured wouldn’t be too bad, since two weeks prior, I ran the Baltimore Half.

I was wrong.  It was not a pretty run.

I kept up my intervals, but I could just feel my body fighting it starting around mile 8 and really feeling it around mile 10.

Part of the problem could have been the utter lack of training on the weekdays beforehand.  I knew it was going to be a rough week with work, and I let that affect my training schedule.

But I got in the miles and that’s what counts.  It was slow, and I realized that if I want to have a chance at a PR at Space Coast, I need to step up my game.  Admittedly, I’m not doing a ton of speedwork in preparation for that tentative goal.  I got the idea after I had such a great race at last year’s Philly Half.  Because I was at 16 or 17 miles in my marathon training, 13.1 was a significant stepback and it felt great all race.  I wasn’t too far off my PR that race without even thinking about time.  So I thought “Hey, maybe I can do that this year and actually get a PR.”

Not the proper way to go about it.  But again, this training is about the marathon, not about the races along the way.

This weekend’s run is 13 miles.  I’m actually looking forward to it.  The weather has cooled off and the running temps are perfect (to me, anyway).  And I ended my last Zombies!Run mission on a slight cliffhanger, so I’m eager to find out what Runner 5 does next.