Marathon Training - Weeks 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and maybe 12

     Okay, let's just be honest... I have not felt like keeping up with my blog for the past nearly 2 months. My last blog was Week 6, and week 7 ended horribly with a hike up at Lincoln State Park with Dorian and the dogs and my losing the only keys to my '09 Explorer out on the trails. It was humid and awful, Dorian and the dogs were tired and wanted to go home, it was just awful... we waited nearly an hour and a half for my husband to get there to pick us up, two days later we went up to meet a Felt's Lock guy who made me two keys (and went ahead and made my husband a spare for his truck). We haven't been back up to Lincoln since.... the experience was too horrible, I had never felt so vulnerable and sick to my stomach in my life, had it just been me, I would have walked the trails backtracking my steps. But I had a 7 year old (autistic) boy who was so tired and wanted to go home, and two dogs who were just as tired and wanted just as badly to go home. It was awful.

Week 8 - 35.1 miles
Week 9 - 36.2 miles 

My long run for week 9 was 16.4 miles and closed out June with 125 miles total. I was on cloud 9 and feeling like a million bucks, little did I know what July had in store for me. My awful toothaches were back in full force and were also causing the most painful migraines I had ever dealt with, these mostly came in the afternoon and stayed with me through the night, which meant no restful sleep at all which had me unable to get up early in the mornings to work out, what made matters worse was the awful heat wave that arrived this month which made it impossible to go for runs in the afternoon (of course so did the migraines). 
Week 10 - 16.5 miles
Week 11 - 23.4 miles
Week 12 - 15.6 miles
Here we are at the final (full) week of July and I had gone to the dentist's office last Thursday, got some medication for the inflammation and infection so that has been helping. 
So I am currently on Week 13 of Marathon training and so far I've gotten up Monday morning to work out, and then I got in 5.5 miles after that.





















Tuesday morning I didn't get up as early as I wanted due to horrible sleep (not migraines or toothaches, but messed up sleep). The only thing that dragged me out of bed was the 60 degrees outside, after 2-3 weeks of awful heat I was not going to miss this. I took Jetta with me, she was happy to go since she hadn't ran much over the last couple weeks. Other than the grumpy drivers we dealt with, it was a great run, and we got to stop and say hello to some horses, cows and a small pony. Got in 7.1 miles.

This morning I woke up to my 3 AM alarm, a little out of it but I got up and headed to the gym.

I'm not fond of the changes they've made, the new cable crossover machine has weighted plates that indicate resistance rather than lbs AND they got rid of certain attachments that I loved using.
After the gym, I drove down to the riverfront to get in an easy out and back 3 miler that turned into a 3.4 mile run with 2 miles of trying to hit my old easy pace which now feels just slightly out of my comfort zone.

 


















So far, this week has been promising.