That’s right – I’m finally running a road marathon.

Monday: 5.4 mi, road
Tuesday: rest
Wednesday: 5.3 mi, pavement (15 min warmup, 30 min tempo, 15 min cooldown)
Thursday: 5.7 mi, road/pavement (2.8 mi at lunch, 2.9 mi after work)
Friday: 3.1 mi, pavement (Midnight Sun Midnight Run 5K)
Saturday: 6.3 mi, road
Sunday: 7.4 mi, road
Total: 33.2 mi

This was a weird week to start, because I was out of town for the weekend, but that’s how things go for someone like me, who fits training around life rather than life around training. I’m kind of using a training plan this time around, instead of just winging it – I started off with Hal Higdon’s Advanced 2 Marathon Plan. I guess if I’ve run 8 (I think?) marathon (or longer) distance races, I can handle an advanced plan. Or maybe I can’t and I’ll burn out, but whatever.

Of course, I’ve taken this plan and made some tweaks to it, for a few reasons. First of all, I can’t always follow a plan exactly. I switch around rest days, I travel, I have weather delays, etc. Of course, it’s rare for someone to complete an entire months-long training plan exactly as prescribed, but I find building in some flexibility from the start is more helpful. Additionally, I am running another marathon (Moose Mountain Marathon) during the training, so I’ll have a bigger long run than prescribed, and moved around some cutback weeks and speed work. I’m also hoping to run Surf the Murph a few weeks later, possibly even the 50 miler, so I’m looking at some increased mileage over what is prescribed.

The other tweaks I’ve made to the plan are pretty simple: any run that isn’t a prescribed strength or speed workout, I’ve labeled “run,” “medium length run,” or “long run.” I can play around with the mileage on those days. I am not increasing the mileage or duration of any prescribed runs, like repeats, tempos, or marathon pace runs. I don’t feel like those are places I can safely and sustainably add mileage, since I have less experience with speedwork.

Monday’s run was dull and uneventful. I was planning to run Tuesday, but ended up going to the Twins game! It was fun, but I had to scramble around to figure out how to fit in another workout on Thursday.

Wednesday’s tempo run was okay. I had a hard time ramping up – I’m not very good at incremental increases in pace. I also had a couple little hills to push through, but overall it was fine. It worked out to be a nice hour-long workout. I guess that’s an upside to speedwork – the workout gets over more quickly!

Thursday I had planned to walk my cousin’s dogs with my mom, so I ran during my lunch hour, then went over to my cousin’s house early and ran to Lake Nokomis, ran partway around the lake, then returned in time to meet my mom and take the dogs out for a 45 minute stroll. They seemed to like it.

Friday I headed up to Duluth in the afternoon. My uncle, aunt, and cousins were coming in from both coasts, and my brother, sister in law, and nephew came over from North Dakota. We all went for a long swim in Pike Lake and were of course exhausted by race time. I had also eaten some ice cream that was making me feel really full, so I wasn’t sure the race would go well. After a slow start thanks to the crowd, I was able to take off and push through for a course-best 29:29. While my sister in law and I were waiting for my brother and my husband to finish, a woman came through the finisher’s chute and threw up like 4 times, which was… not what I wanted to see after finishing a race. Ew.

Saturday I went for a late run after a day of swimming, tubing, and water-skiing. I was pretty tired, but still managed to unintentionally run 10K by “circumnavigating” Pike Lake. I barely saw the lake during the run, so it wasn’t very scenic. It was also nearly dark before I finished, so that was stupid. Sunday I did another run near Pike Lake, this time along Caribou Lake Road, and I guess I’ll consider 7.4 miles to be my medium length run for the week. I didn’t have a long run planned, since this is my first full week of marathon training and also my first full week back after FANS.