Boston Marathon - Week 2

Week 2: April 19th – 25th

This was a good week getting back on the path of a real training cycle.  The things that stood out to me were that I got out of bed and got my runs done on multiple days when in the past months (without a training plan) I would have told myself I would run at lunch instead and then not run.  In addition to that I have started to create set paths for runs, instead of making it up on the fly and naming the runs.

The reason for this (other than being able to refer to them easily) is that it makes the run easier for me mentally.  Having to create a route on the fly means that I can’t fully zone out as I need to constantly be making the small decisions of where to go and how far that would be.  It means I don’t have to consistently convince myself to run further when I don’t feel like running or I’m having a bad day.  It’s much easier to simply tell yourself that this is the route you are taking from the start and that you have to finish it and more enjoyable as you’re not fighting yourself at every turn.  This was a big help to me on Monday when I didn’t feel great at the start of the run and would have cut the run short if I didn’t have a preset route to run.

This being the second week of training, I haven’t had any workouts yet as my body needs to get reaccustomed to running five to six days a week.  You want to avoid multiple changes to your training routine at once as that increases your injury risk and this was my first change.  Since this was the second week, I should have started strides but I was lazy and didn’t.  Next up comes adding in workouts.  Since I haven’t done workouts for a sustained period of time since last summer and my training cycle is a very long one, I’ll be starting slowly to give my body a chance to adjust and to make sure that the workouts don’t get too big too soon in the training cycle.

Upcoming Week: 41 miles, 12 mile long run, 15 min tempo, 15 min fartlek