Marathon Quest 2011 - Week 16 Recap

Two weeks from now at this very time I'll have finished my marathon (I can't believe how fast time is moving)...and will hopefully be stuffed full and sleepy fromThanksgiving dinner, dessert and vino.  The inlaws are coming over to Vic to cheer me on and we've hosted Thanksgiving dinner every year for both our families for as long as I can remember, so I couldn't not host again this year as I didn't want to disappoint everyone.  It's one of the very few opportunities that we have during the year to get everyone together from both sides, and it'll be so nice to have family around to help us celebrate (or commiserate!) on the day's events.  Now before you call me nuts for making dinner after running a marathon, we're not doing a full out turkey dinner but having roast chicken, manicotti, salad and some kind of dessert...all of which is going to be prepped a few days before so all we have to do is put it in the oven and let it cook while I convalesce on the couch, sipping some port or scotch (oh sweet sweet scotch, how I've missed you so!). 

Without further delay - this week's workouts:

Sunday - rest day
Strangely, I felt pretty good after the 32K run - a little sore, but not bad at all.

Monday - bootcamp
Legs and more legs...Sarge worked us over and it was all lower body.  I think next Monday will be the last bootcamp I do and will do some short runs the last week before the race, just to avoid getting sore as my legs were pretty stiff on Tuesday.  I had my second to last visit with my physio, and once again she's pretty happy with how I'm progressing.  I had felt some pains around my knee on Saturday's run, so she did her IMS magic on me to release some of the muscles.  Still thinking about what to get for her for all her help, and I think flowers with a gift card for dinner out somewhere delicious would be perfect. 

Tuesday - rest day

Wednesday - 6K run outside
I know Hubs isn't going to miss these anymore - ha!  I actually like running in the morning when it's so quiet and peaceful, but it's pretty dark and in some sections it's hard to see the ground...this makes me nervous as I really don't want to twist an ankle or something stupid.  Seriously, I need to wrap myself in bubble wrap.

Thursday - 6K treadmill
This was hard.  I really didn't feel like getting up and running, so I made a deal with myself that if after ten minutes I didn't feel like staying on, I could stop.  Honestly, I was dragging my ass through the whole thing and was practically speed walking, but I did it.  Barely.

Friday - bootcamp
Yowza.  A tough class because I was feeling really tired and worn out, but got paired up with another girl who was faster than me so I really had to push myself to keep up.  We were doing some hill work, and there was one time where I kind of had that vague I-might-puke kinda feeling.  In the end I was glad though, because I ended up being pushed instead of dragging my butt like I did the day before.

Saturday -  23K 21K 20K
Woot!  My second to last Saturday long run.  I met up with M downtown at our office as she wanted to run the half marathon route, which was perfect.  I was supposed to do 23K, so a half marathon was close enough.  Another one of our coworkers A wanted to join us, so once we all got to the office, off we went.  We ended up running quite a bit faster than what we had been - my LSD target pace per the Running Room training is supposed to be 7:08 - 8:00/km, but I've been running in the 6:30-6:45 target range...I think for the first few kilometres on Saturday's run we ended up running around 5:45 - 6:00/km!   This was a lot faster than what I was used to...and my foot started to complain and definitely was not happy with me.  By the end, it was aching and it's been reminding me all day how unhappy it is with me right now so I'm icing, massaging and am going to take tomorrow off bootcamp and do a workout on the stationery bike instead to give the foot a rest.  I definitely don't need anything to flare up at this point!  Anyways, we ended up getting a bit lost on the route so were a bit short and ended up only doing 20K, which at this point was completely A-OK by me!  Funny, I seem to get way more tired on the shorter runs than I do the longer ones...hope this bodes well for the marathon.  Heh.