I’m not running Grandma’s Marathon this year.

Now for a recap of my mileage for last week:
Monday: rest
Tuesday: 4.6, road, speedwork/pickups
Wednesday: 7.1, road
Thursday: 4, road
Friday: 4.6, 2 miles medium effort, road for speedwork, trail for recovery
Saturday: 7.9, road
Sunday: rest/homework
Total: 28.3

I decided about 4 miles into my run on Saturday (a run that was supposed to be 16 miles) that I was not going to continue to pursue an entry into Grandma’s Marathon this year. It made the rest of the run suck really badly, as I was really down on myself about the decision.

I haven’t run since Saturday, and it’s now Wednesday. I planned on running today but I feel sort of gross. I mostly haven’t run because I have had a bunch of homework to do. That was part of the reason why I cut my run in half on Saturday. The guilt of taking over four hours of my Saturday to run, when I knew I had a ton of work to do, was the final criterion I needed to pull the plug on marathon training for now.

I know I said at the beginning that I was going to do a full training cycle whether or not I ran Grandma’s. I am not, I’ll save the full training cycle for the Mankato Marathon.

My plan right now is somewhat haphazard, but I am going to:
1. Finish up my last few days of school and my finals.
2. Do some speed work and medium runs in preparation for my race on May 16th.
3. Start an 8-week 10K training plan in preparation for the Park Point 5 Miler.

I think focusing on speed for awhile might do me some good. The single biggest issue with marathon training was the time commitment. It will always be a time commitment, of course, but if I can shave some seconds off my comfortable training paces, I can make the time commitment more manageable.

Thus ends the Week XX updates for now.