Week 20

“Success is a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don’t quit when you’re tired. You quit when the gorilla is tired.”
- Robert Strauss

Another decent week. I feel like I'm used to this life as a Marathon Trainee now. I haven't seen friends that don't run in a REALLY long time, but despite that I am pretty happy with my long work days and 60+ mile weeks. It's a routine and it probably sounds really boring to most people... but I enjoy it. Thankfully, I have a boyfriend that is crazier about running than I am, lots of good friends who DO run and don't mind that the only time I can catch up is during a run, and a family that is supportive of my running and is busy enough with their own lives that they don't really mind.

This week wasn't all unicorns and rainbows... On Wednesday I started to notice a bit of a sore throat, by Thursday I was feeling fatigued, too. Saturday my nose started running and Sunday evening I was on my death bed. I think I've turned the corner as of about 7am this morning. But, holy crap the 12 hours before that were awful.

I ended up taking Thursday off and switching my mid-long run of the week to Saturday. So, I still managed to get all my runs in.

The week:
Fast: 8x800s
Long: 17 miler with my eye on the pace.
Total: 65ish

My 800s were a lot faster and a lot easier than I thought they would be. I've been going into work at 7am most days of the week, so I decided to jet out of work at 4 so that most of my workout would actually be in the daylight. I was dreading the workout. It's no secret I hate 800s and these were the by the book Yasso 800s, which means same time recovery as the interval. Blarg. I will say that those long ass recoveries made the workout a lot easier, I think. Is that good, though? I'd like to do some research on why the recoveries are so long. Wouldn't you gain more fitness if your recoveries were shorter? Is it not about gaining fitness? I NEED ANSWERS YASSO!

The long run was my experimental/dry run long run and I will save that for it's own post. But, I did manage to finish the 17 miles on Sunday and then spent the rest of the day blowing my nose, lying on my floor moaning in pain, and eventually I put a bra on and shuffled my ass over to Wal-Greens to get a new box of Puffs and some Mucinex.

Thankfully, I think the heart of the cold is gone and I'm just dealing with some lingering after effects. I'm hopeful that this last week of intense training will be a good one for me.