Well, that was a week. Whose idea was it to schedule a marathon so my last peak week would coincide with the first week of school? Some idiot, obviously. It’s still too hot for this sally to run in the evenings, and it’s getting too dark for comfort when I start running in the mornings, so all of this week’s runs started on the treadmill, and then I joyously headed outside as soon as a little light peeked out. It’s not ideal, but you gotta do what you gotta do. And here’s what I did:

Monday: 
AM: 12 miles at easy pace.. Our hot water heater crapped out on us Sunday night, which was a bummer, but it made getting in and out of the shower post-run extra speedy, and that was good since I still made it to work early. 

PM: Full-body strength at home once the plumbers were done fixing our hot water heater. I started watching Bachelor in Paradise for my trashy-TV-while-exercising fix. It is truly terrible, but I can’t stop watching. 

Tuesday:
AM: 9 miles easy. Here’s a picture of the river I run over almost every day. I don’t think I took this on Tuesday, but this seemed like a good place for a picture. I am so good at blogging. 

PM: 30 minutes yoga. Actually, I can’t remember if I did yoga Tuesday or Wednesday, but it doesn’t really matter.

Wednesday: 
AM: 11 miles with 7 at tempo. This was the opposite of easy.

PM: Either the yoga I claimed I did Tuesday or 30 minutes of core and stretching/foam rolling.

Thursday:
AM: 9 miles easy

PM: 45 minutes of strength. I did mostly upper body because my legs were feeling extra tired. I was hoping that just doing a little bodyweight work on them would mean they’d be fresher for Saturday’s long run. Spoiler alert: They weren’t. 

Friday: 
AM: 8 easy miles

PM: I used all my strength to hold the coach down.  

Saturday:
Are you getting tired of hearing about terrible long runs? Because I’m getting really tired of having them. My schedule said 22 with 12 at goal pace. Once again, goal pace didn’t happen. My legs felt leaden and my mind was wimpy. I ended up with 21.2 miles with 11 at not goal pace. At least I had some cool clouds to look at for a while.

I think it’s time to admit that a 3:10 marathon might not be in the cards for me. Whomp whomp. I can make a lot of excuses for this run: I got up at 4:20 every morning this week and ran 8-12 miles. It rained all night Friday so was extra humid Saturday morning. The first week of school is always extra stressful and exhausting, and I’m out of gels and the ones I ordered haven’t come, so I was running on empty. But excuses aside, I’ve had  a slew of shoddy race-pace runs, and I need to accept that I might be aiming too high. I’m not writing it off entirely yet, but I think that in order to hit it, I’m going to have to have a perfect taper and absolutely ideal race conditions.

Sunday: 
Rest. I think I needed it mentally as much as physically.

Totals: 70.2 miles, some strength/yoga/etc.

And thus ends my final peak week. This coming week my mileage will be 50something, and then I’ll start tapering in earnest. This might be the first time ever that I’m actually looking forward to tapering. Remind me of that when taper madness sets in, okay?

Have a great week, friends!

How is your training going?

Ever had bad training sessions result in a good race? Give me some hope!

Have you watched Bachelor in Paradise? What do you think?