Two weeks of incredibly dull training, comin’ atcha!

Monday (9/17): 5.6 mi, treadmill
Tuesday: 6.2 mi, treadmill
Wednesday: 5.5 mi, treadmill (hill workout)
Thursday: 6 mi, treadmill
Friday: 5.3 mi, treadmill
Saturday: rest
Sunday: rest
Total: 28.6 mi

Monday (9/24): 5 mi, treadmill
Tuesday: 6.1 mi, paved trail (MRT)
Wednesday: 6 mi, paved trail (MRT)
Thursday: rest
Friday: 5.3 mi, paved trail (Battle Creek)
Saturday: 5.5 mi, treadmill
Sunday: 6.1 mi, paved trail (Fort Snelling to Minnehaha Park & back)
Total: 34 mi

I’m officially in the “marking time” phase of training, which is probably not a normal marathon training phase, but I always seem to end up here. Probably because I’m always catching colds and entering survival mode.

Week 14 revolved around prep for our party on Saturday. I ran on the treadmill because it was the easiest way for me to control the amount of time my workout would take. I would run on the treadmill and then spend the next several hours of each night running around frantically trying to clean the house, decorate it, shove stuff in closets, and prep food. I think we took six or seven separate trips to the grocery store between Wednesday and Saturday.

I’d planned to take Saturday off from running, of course. I spent all day giving tours of my house and flitting from room to room worrying my guests were not getting enough of my time and attention. My friends and family are pretty great and could fend for themselves, but I still fretted about entertaining them, especially the ones who didn’t know anyone else. (My high school friends, meanwhile, were out back playing an extremely aggressive soccer game with a sad looking basketball found under my back deck by the sons of two of my friends. They were good to go.) It turned out all the fun and frenzy wore me out and I was in bed by 10 PM.

My plan for Sunday was to work out, go to a welcome party for my cousin’s darling new baby, go to a birthday/PhD celebration for one of the aggressive soccer players from the previous day, and then have a dinner with two other friends who could not make the party. I was tired, my back hurt from standing so much the day before, and I was mentally drained (but happily so!) – so I hit the snooze button and focused on spending time with friends and family. It’s not like I’m winning this damn marathon or something.

Then, week 15, I came down with another cold-like illness. And here I am, Wednesday night, over a week later, still not totally over it, despite going through an entire bottle of Zicam QuickMelts. Of course, I did keep running – I really wanted to beat my Sept 2017 mileage. (Narrator: She did, by 0.88 mi.) I also didn’t feel so sick that I needed to stop. While I was tired, had a bit of a stuffy head/runny nose, and sneezed a bit, I never got that horrible, sick, sweaty feeling like I did when walking to meet the bus for the Moose Mountain Marathon. I never felt dizzy or light-headed, so I kept on. I even did a tempo run on Tuesday, and though I felt like total crap and like my legs were encased in concrete, I ended up running about the same pace I would have wanted to run. So hey, a good sign?

I did a lot of runs on the Mississippi River Trail, just to get out of the house and off the treadmill. It would have been perfect weather for running almost every day last week, had I not been ill. I ended up overdressing for most of my runs in order to avoid getting chilled.

Race week is upon me now, and I’m using it to rest, get healthy, and run teeny tiny distances. I even have Friday off from work to relax! (Ha ha, work got insane so I’ll prb be working anyway.) At this point, my main goal is to get to the starting line with clear lungs and clear sinuses. I dream big!