Marathon Training Diaries: Week 6

Last year during the height of training for the Berlin Marathon, I decided I hated marathon training (wrote a whole blog about it) and vowed to never run a marathon again (or at least take a very, very long break).

As you can probably tell from the title of this post, that lasted…I don’t know, a couple of months. Turns out, I love the marathon (the most toxic relationship of my life).

Since it’s been a minute since I wrote on here, here’s the update:

• I signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon as soon as registration opened on April 6. It was the equivalent of Noah Kahan tickets for me (although it has yet to sell out as of the date of this post, joke’s on me!).

• I moved, which 1) put a damper on my base training, and 2) took me to a much hillier part of the country, which you will likely hear me complain about ad nauseam until race day.

• After adjusting my plan and doing a weird mesh of training plan and base plan, I have landed on a 21-week build to what I hope will be a 5-hour marathon.

• 
  

I just wrapped up Week 6 of that plan, which was, obviously, not perfect. I had an unplanned rest day, and evidently I would rather die from lack of training on race day than ever make it to more than 7 miles on a treadmill.

But, I did get out for my long run, a 10-mile doozy in Virginia humidity. Pride goeth before the fall, because I brought my handheld, not my vest, and ran out of water way too early (did we all know Walmart didn’t take Apple Pay? What?).

Weirdly, besides the hills, the hardest part of adjusting to a new running routine has been figuring out the best long run route. Looping in neighborhoods is only slightly less painful than the treadmill for me, and my second week of training I was thoroughly humbled by a nearby trail, so trying to find a happy medium has been a struggle. It’s not as easy as the out-and-backs I had along the lakefront in Chicago. And it requires juuuust enough mental energy that getting out the door has been a bit harder than usual.

All that to say, we ended the week at 18 miles, one of my highest mileage weeks since the marathon last year. I have never been super aggressive with my mileage, but my hope is to build up to two-to-three 20 or 22-mile long runs this training cycle, due to a much stronger base and the experience training for a marathon (if you’re running a marathon for the first time, dear God PLEASE do not subject yourself to that many 20-milers).

But beyond more mileage and an-out-for-revenge time goal (RIP running a 5-hour marathon in Berlin), my goal for this training cycle is to fuel better - especially during my runs. My proudest moment of my long run this past week was eating the gel at mile 7 because that’s what the plan called for, and even though I didn’t want to, I did it.

My intention is for this to be a weekly series where I recap the realities of marathon training. The good, the bad, and the incredibly ugly. We see so many polished versions of marathon training (matching sets, perfect pacing, PR after PR) that I hope to provide something a little more raw and real. I will be honest when I miss (skip) runs, don’t hit the pace I want, and yes,

I will yell about hills. And by finding the humor in, and not hiding, the worst parts of marathon training, I hope to have a bit more fun than last year, and maybe encourage a few other people not to take running so seriously.

See ya out there.