Surprisingly enough, my second week of training went well! This week I felt focused and strong, as my pace is getting faster before my mileage really picks up. When I was training for the Marine Corps Marathon, I just ran what I felt. I didn’t do speed any speed workouts like strides, fartleks, or tempo runs. This time around, Matt bought me a VO2 Max training plan, and it has been heavenly. I’m so happy to have more focused runs and goals. It takes the monotony away and really makes me feel like I’m training hard.
Tuesday was a less motivated day for me unfortunately. I went upstairs to the gym with my friend to work out, and went with the intention of running half of my run (2 miles) due to some stomach issues, but ended up sucking it up and doing 4.1 on the treadmill. To be honest, I couldn’t have made it through without Netflix. I was supposed to do strides, but cut those out. I felt guilty at the time but I need to listen to my body more, and my body was telling me to take it easy.
Wednesday was my first fartlek run ever! I did a 2 mile warm up, then 5 rounds of 3 minutes comfortably fast, 2 minutes easy. It was incredibly windy that day (winds roughly 25-30mph) and the first half of my run was against the wind. I felt like I was barely moving, but as soon as I turned around I felt like a speed demon. It was nice to have such an intricate run on a windy day, it made it go by much quicker since I was focusing on not forgetting how many repeats I had done.
Thursday was an easy 5, which I did with Matt after work. It’s so nice to have our Thursdays as easy runs so we can catch up on our week. Despite living together, between his job, my job, our puppy, and social obligations, it’s becoming more difficult to make time for just us. The run went well, and we kept the pace close to 9:30/mile.
Saturday was my long run (10 miles) and we decided to go to the Heartbreak Hill Running Company run again. I did the Firehouse loop again, this time by myself, and it was by far the fastest and best feeling long run I’ve ever done. I started out at 9:00/mile and got faster from there. My plan said to go by feel and I was feeling absolutely amazing. I ended up finishing in 1:27:50 (5 minutes faster than last week’s) which made my average pace 8:46/mile. We also went on a short little hike with Gustav during the snowstorm to get some more movement in!
Sunday I was supposed to do 5, but I was absolutely not feeling it. After a night of board games and beer, my stomach was not going to let me run 5. I went up to the treadmill and ran 3 pretty easy miles and called it a week. I clocked 28.9 miles for the week and am feeling really good about the next week. So far no injuries, and I’ve been sticking with stretching/rolling after every run. Looking forward to more weekly updates!
One and a Half Runners 
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