WDW Marathon Training Week 6/18
This gif would probably fit better in a few weeks when I hit the point of marathon training that I’m hungry all the time but oh well, here we are. The sixth thing I’m looking forward to this January is cookies from Gideon’s. I don’t normally get swept into the hype of the latest dessert craze but we tried these last January and they did not disappoint. It helps that there was a virtual queue so we were able to eat dinner and explore instead of waiting in line for hours. No cookie is worth all that. I’m still craving that chocolate cherry cookie over 8 months later.
9-11 Oct - Rest
I had a bit of a scratch in my throat on Sunday that I did my best to ignore. Unfortunately it did not ignore me and I was out for three days.
12 Oct - Easy 6
Was originally planning to do 10 but I still wasn’t feeling 100% and I didn’t have time before work to fit them all in. Something >nothing
13 Oct - Easy 7
This was meant to be 6 but I needed to collect my bib for the race on Sunday so I ended up going a bit further to include that into my route. I got rained on which resulted in some unfortunate chafing but otherwise felt good.
14 Oct - Easy 4
Took my run through the start/finish line. Built up my excitement for the race the following day
15 Oct - Half Marathon
I was going to do a proper race recap but I haven’t had the time so I’ll give you the short version. My goal was to stick with the 1:45 pacer for as long as possible. I knew that time was within reach but had doubts about it because I hadn’t trained explicitly for the half. The weather was perfect for me but i was also still recovering from being sick.
I didn’t start right next to the pacer but kept him in my sights and caught up to the group before mile 2. They were going a little fast so I just hung around behind the group. There was a bit of internal dialog on if I should just pace myself to try to break 1:45 or stick with them. Since my plan originally was to run with the pacer, I decided to just hang on as long as I could. Maybe I’d surprise myself and I’d never ran with a pacer before so this low stakes race was a good time to try it out.
Sometime around mile 5 I heard the pacer tell the group that we were running fast to bank time for later. I immediately questioned all of my life choices because that’s not how distance running works. From there I decided to just go at it alone and managed fairly consistent 8:00 miles until mile 12.
The pace group was getting further and further away but my running math told me I still had a shot at 1:45. I kept pushing as much as I could. I was running on empty but I had to keep going as best I could. When I turned the corner toward the finish line I could see 1:45:xx on the clock and did everything in my power to get to the finish line.
Sadly I just didn’t have enough left and finished in 1:46:02. But that’s still over a minute PR! I know that if I paced better and explicitly trained for the event that sub 1:45 is in my future.
I’ll update my marathon shape numbers in the next post. I’ve already finished week 7 as of this post so I don’t want to share those numbers just yet. The numbers are staying more consistent. They still bounce around a bit but not nearly as much as 6 weeks ago.
especially when recovering from being sick and not having trained explicitly for it!
. (Everyone else I know that ran has complained that it was too cold at the start)
.
I had a feeling this was going to happen. My nephew got married Saturday night and then we drove 6 hours back home Sunday AM so I was exhausted. Initially I planned to move the long run to Saturday but with how the week was going, I couldn’t bear 3 bad runs in a row. Eventually, I mustered up enough motivation to get out the door and then got yelled at by a weirdo 2 blocks from my home and promptly turned around. I did try to finish on the treadmill but by that point I had lost my mojo and called it 
