December 24-30: Recovery Week

Last week was a recovery week, a well-timed one with holidays calling for travel to exotic locations like "Detroit" and causing widespread gym/pool closures. It followed three solid weeks of training for the Myrtle Beach Marathon, and last weekend, I was complaining that I FELT GREAT and I didn't need no stinking recovery week.

Then I woke up Monday like this.

(Image credit to Cat)

I spent a lot of the first few days of the week internally flogging myself for lying on the couch and barely moving most of the day, and then reminded myself that rest is when you make fitness gains. Blah blah blah.

I still dislike recovery weeks, but at least this one left me rested and ready to train through another big block before we taper for the marathon on February 16. So while the numbers for this week aren't impressive, I'm trusting that next week will make up for that.

Oh, and so will a sub-4 hour marathon in 1.5 months. That'll be worth it, too.

Monday: A 5.19 mile easy run (9:33 pace) in the morning before hopping on a plane to Detroit.

Tuesday: Rest day, with about 4-5 miles of cautiously walking on iced-over streets and sidewalks in Detroit. Per my training plan, I had the option of running for fun, but there was nowhere safe to run because the roads and sidewalks there go uncleared/untreated, and an inch of ice covered all of them.

Wednesday: The roads were still unfit for running, so I headed to the friendly, neighborhood JCC for some treadmill time to get in my scheduled tempo run. Most people have a local JCC that is a tiny little building, but this is not the case in Detroit, where there is, in fact, a campus.

That’s not even 10% of it. Amazing. What was not amazing, however, was the shin pain I encountered on the treadmill. Not sure what the cause was, but after my warm up and 2400 threshold effort (12:24, 8:16/mile pace), I called it a day at 2.67 miles and hopped onto the arc trainer for 40 minutes of boring striding to finish out the workout.

Thursday: Notice no swimming the first 3 days this week? Right. So did my mood. So in the morning, I convinced my mom to go to a local rec center with me, where I logged 4000 yards before flying home in the evening.

Friday: A three part workout, starting with a 4.79 mile fun run (9:24 pace, minimal shin pain), followed by half an hour of strength training, and wrapped up with 2500 meters of swimming.

Saturday: Recovery week called for a shorter long run, so I headed out for 12 miles with Mia. The rain started falling around mile 5, and turned into snow/sleet by mile 7. For the last 4 miles, we were to build to marathon pace, but we wound up building to something like half marathon/10 miler/10k pace because we just wanted to be done. Averaged 9:13 for the whole run, and finished out at 8:27 pace.

Sunday: An hour of easy spinning on the trainer followed by 30 minutes of strength training in the morning. 1500 yards of swimming after coaching in the afternoon.