Week 4 is done! The good, the bad, and the ugly is all here.  The truth of my journey as I train for Boston at 45 years old with a hope to be able to perform 106 days from today in a way that will make me proud of my work.  

This week, I bombed my speed work with Dave and then promptly "recycled" myself for a speed-work do-over while planning to move hills to Tuesday. This way I can keep training with Kim as she goes longer and longer on Mondays, climb hills on tired legs on Tuesday, and have a chance to nail my speed work on Thursday after a rest day. I raced a check-in race (just a mile) on Saturday and then got a heat-exhausting 18M LR done with Rich.  And this was a 57 mile "drop-back" week.   ​

Kim and I moved our Mondays to the beach.  I just need to see the ocean. It is 45 minute drive each way for me to do this but it is so worth it. The cool ocean breeze in hot humid air makes it feel more comfortable.  The smell and sounds of the surf distract from the work. It is so rewarding to run at the beach for me.

Tuesday, it was hot, humid and even though I thought I was fine after the 10M with Kim yesterday my legs clearly were not peppy and needed more rest.  This workout was .3 mile repeats as fast as possible.  Last week I got down to 5:56 pace but this week I was falling apart and trying with everything I had to hold on to sub-7 pace today. (This did not build my confidence for the Mile race I would do Saturday).

I asked Dave if he would mind a repeat week at .3's because I don't feel good about graduating up to .4's yet since these felt horrible. He was fine with us recycling the workout.  

I also want to make was to move our hills to Tuesday instead (I can climb tired and that is more likely to help prep me for late-race hills anyway). I would like that rest day before the speed work (which we will now do Thursdays). This should help me nail speed-day or at least be better at it. 

On Wednesday, Sidney and I did a lot of walking, with (before work) and without (after work) the dogs today. It was nice to just walk.  I need to bring my phone for pictures of the walk days too. Sidney is getting left out of the blog and he is a big support for me.  The dogs need to make there own appearance here too.  They help me get a lot of time on my feet. 

Thursday was Hill Repeat Day.  We did 10 repeats of the 16% climb.  We made some changes to this workout.  

We decided to stick to just 10 repeats for the rest of the training cycle but we want to improve out time in three ways. We stopped resting at the top and now immediately turn right back around to recover at the bottom before the next round.  That is more like what we will deal with when climbing over a hill.  

So now as we do this workout, every other week,
(1) we will try to climb faster (my fastest split on my Garmin is 1:03),
(2) we will try to get faster on the decline, and
(3) we want to rest less at the bottom.  

Fridays are just a relaxing day.  Run/Walk with Kim.  No rush today. 

Today, Rich joined me to race the first USATF-NJ Long Distance Running Grand Prix Race of the year.   It was 1 mile. :)  My entire race report for The Big Bang Mile is here. 

I ran a 6:19 for 7th place in my heat and 3rd place in my age group (45-49).  This is good. I am happy. I am only in week 4 of training, still focused only on volume building, with some hills, and some fast short speed session.  I am not race-ready. 

My favorite part of the day may have been with Dave D. put down his trumpet to say to us "OMG you are here to run 1 mile, That's hilarious... now go off and do like 20 more!" and Rich says to me quietly "We'll do that tomorrow" :) 

Saturday. This was grueling for me. So hot and humid. "Felt like" 92 degrees. Did I say Humid? It's summer. Nothing is shocking here. I could have gotten their earlier but my phone died over night and my alarm never woke me. Thank goodness for Lapis's big giant paw to my face at 6:20 am. She was wondering why I was still sleeping which means she does pay attention to me :)  She is a sweet dog.  

Coffee and BCAAs on the way to the run. Then just water the rest of the way. No calories. I paused the watch at bathrooms and when back at the car so I could get more water. So this is just run-time. 

I hit the wall hard at maybe 14.5 miles. But that is the point. I want to Embrace the Wall. Give it Big Fat French Kiss and tell it I love it... and I want to visit it regularly in training. If I get to know it now, when I am carb-depleted, dehydrated, under-trained and cumulatively fatigued,  I know it will then not interfere with my carb-loaded, well-hydrated, well-trained, and tapered dreams on race day.  That is what depletion training is all about for me. 

First, my sleep stinks. I should just shut the laptop right now and go directly to bed!

Last week, I said I wanted 7:15 hours average but I got less! 6:39 hours average. I can't function like this. This is in part because my bed situation is horrible but it should be better soon.  Sid and I are trying to find the perfect mattress topper that is good for both of us and this has been a tricky little puzzle.  I think the next topper we get may be the right fit.  We shall see. 

Next, although I gained 0.5lbs this week, it seems that some of that is muscle so I am ok with that. 

AND next, I added strength training 3 times per week but only AT HOME Body-Weight resistance stuff.  I'll get back to gym eventually.  For now I am thrilled that I can use my left foot solo when doing calf raises and single leg hops because as of last week I could not do that (heel bursa was mad). The ironic things here is that my heel bursa improved after I raced he mile?  I am confused but happy. 

I do need to add flex work next. That is always the hardest to make time for. I do add some in throughout the day but I make no dedicated time for it. 

Finally, STRYD and my Garmin both agree that I am getting faster. I have no idea what makes them think these are times I could run, but I would bet if I ran a marathon right now, I would be closer to STRYD than Garmin at this moment. 

That is all I got for this week! Bring on Week 5.  

I am off to sleep now. 

The Big Bang Mile was the first USATF-NJ race of the abbreviated 2021 Long Distance Race Series. I am so excited to be part of this again! 

The race took place at Bell Works in NJ which is "a work, live, play office campus, with tons of hip amenities in addition to the office tenants, a thriving hub of activity, also open to the public."

The conditions were Hot and Humid with some Wind. The race took place in heats and my 40+ Masters Women was at 9:45 am.

The course was an out-and-back with a lovely wide turn at the turnaround. It was fast. No slow 180's around a cone here! At every quarter mile there was a sign and a clock too. This was all very thoughtful. 

I arrived around 8 am to meet Rich and his son for some meandering warm-up miles. 3-4 miles before the race seemed like enough. Rich's son was racing at 9 am and Rich at 10 am. This meant a lot of running back and forth to the starting line so we just ran around the campus until it was time for someone to race. 

The warm up for me really started in the car.  I usually listen to podcasts or audio books when I drive around. But this morning I pulled up the play list I used when I was racing well at the end of 2019. I played it loud. I felt surrounded by rhythm. I realized in that moment how much loud music is a part of my racing, but not a part of anything else for me.  I need this.

When running some warm up miles, I could feel the familiar sensation of adrenaline and endorphins and all the feel-good performance-enhancing neuro-chemicals that completely flood me before a race. I forgot that feeling. I missed it.  This is a special thing the body can do... to get completely amped up in anticipation of an intention to do something really hard. This feeling is so incredible. It feels like magic.   

I return to what I had been doing in the past before longer races. This was just a practice run anyway.  

Like I always do before races, I ate more carbs than I generally intend to eat on a daily basis. So the night before I had sushi (I prefer to eat rice or potatoes before racing, not pasta). We ate at Kona Grill, which I feel was not the best choice and I won't do that again. I don't know if chain restaurant food is just more bloating than local sushi, but it felt that way to me. I drank more water the day before that I normally do.  

I had coffee in the morning, and then on the drive down I had some Fruit punch flavored BCAAs on the way to the race. I did not eat anything on race day morning because after all this was just 1 mile. 

I brought 3 pairs of sneakers with me because clearly I forgot how to race. I ended up wearing all three pairs by the end of the morning, lol.  I warmed up in the Endophorin Pros because I thought I would use them. I didn't feel like I could justify putting a "un-trained" mile in my expensive Nike Vaporfly Next%. But after a few strides during the warm up and ONE HUGE quarter mile sprint during the last quarter of Rich's son Mile (so we could cheer him on at both places) I decided I needed all the help I could get today :) Vaporflys it would be. I cooled down in my Pegasus. 

I brought a gel... for no reason at all. Out of habit maybe? I was not taking a gel before this mile. I don't know if I would take a gel before any mile?  I don't race miles.  This was just a Check-In race and just showing up was winning for me today.  

I was worried about my irritated heel bursa. This was my biggest concern. I didn't want to do any damage at the start of Boston Training just to race a mile relatively "slowly" (as I am not even close to being peak shape yet).  The bursa has been on-and-off the last two weeks.  Today it was fine and I wanted to keep it that way. I would stop if it felt terrible. I knew this. 

However, apparently running a fast mile was exactly what my bursa needed (which makes no sense). Ever since I raced that hard mile, my bursa has been the happiest and least problematic it has been lately. I can jump on just my left foot again which I wasn't able to do comfortable before the race.  

Had this not been a USATF-NJ LDR Team race, I would not have raced today at all.  I know I race most comfortably when I am about 117lb and I was bouncing from 122 to 126 this week. I knew I was little heavier than I prefer to be when I line up to compete. I would have waited if this wasn't a team race.  I am glad I didn't wait. 

Knowing all this about myself, I was confident I could be sub-7, but my goal-window was 6:20-6:45. I wanted to negative split.

​Overall, I was not very confident in my ability to assess what I could really do since I haven't raced since 1/11/2020. I needed to just assess and test.  That is what today was for.  

I line up one row back from the line. There is one command and the gun and I take off fast. Faster than I realized I actually could move. My watch says 5:50.  This felt surprisingly nice but I know this was a very bad move.  I wanted to get out of way of the small group a little before I  slowed myself so I would not cause anyone behind me any issues.  A few moment later I slowed down to what looked like a 6:12 pace on my watch. That feels fine for the moment, but I want to negative split and I don't feel like I could get faster from there. So I slow a bit more. 

My watch seems unreliable by the first 1/4 mark, so I just try to run by feel. It says I am running 6:50 pace but I know by those around me that can't be correct. I hit the 1/2 turn around and split my watch.  First 0.5M -3:02 I actually don't feel terrible. I have a little bit of hope in me that I can and will negative split this thing.

And then I complete the turn into that headwind. Excellent (not). Ok, now I know why 3:02 felt so "ok"... but I also knew negative splitting was unlikely. 

I wasn't able to pick up and hold my pace. I wanted to salvage the last quarter mile at the least. My watch is still telling me I am moving at 6:50 pace or slower, BUT I felt like that couldn't be correct. I am sure others probably didn't notice the wind as much as me but I felt like I was fighting it.

My torso was getting tired. My arms were tired. Everything was tired. All I could think about was how tired I was instead what I should be doing. This needs to change. I cannot use my energy to achieve a goal if all my energy is being used to assess what is not going well.  Feeling like I am working hard is not shocking. This is supposed to be hard. I have done harder things. 

6 ladies were ahead of me. I couldn't tell if any more were going to pass me. I see the "1/4M To Go" sign. That clock reads 4:39. Wait, what? 4:39. 4:30 is 6:00 pace.  If I kicked hard could I possibly run 6:09? But I had no oomph.... I know I had another gear in me, I know I did, BUT it was just so very hard to shift. The work of shifting gears is always so much harder than how it feels after the shift. I am out of shifting practice. Rather than shift to kick, I became complacent. Complacency is the path of least resistance. That is not ok in racing (or life, really). "This is fine.  I am fine. 6:30-6:45 is fine. I don't need to make this any worse. I am almost done. This is a mile. I am not a miler. This is not what I am good at..."  

Then I hear Jim O. yell something to me (and snap me out that negative self talk). I can't tell exactly what he said (later he explained and it was funny), but I knew it meant someone was behind me and I needed to move. So I took a moment to muster up all my energy and I did finally shift, but much later than I should have.

I didn't mind cruising in a few seconds slower, but I would mind if someone blew past me with less than a tenth to go.  Probably with about .1 to go, I was able to open my stride a bit and feel like a runner again. Second .5M - 3:17

Clock reads 6:19. I fail to stop my watch because I am trying not to die.

I need to travel solo to important races whenever possible.  I need my time with music, bad music, loud music, and my thoughts. I want to not worry about what anyone else needs at that time. I won't have the capacity to be there for anyone else when I completely self-absorbed.  I just want to be self-absorbed in my car for the ride over.   

I need to revisit my pre-race routine. Today was not the day to worry about that and I enjoyed having no structure. But in the future, I need make sure I know what I am doing and when I need to do it.  For important races, this routine needs to be non-negotiable. I need to get on the bathroom line when I need to. I need time to change shoes when I need to, I need to make time to do strides when I need to. I need to be lined up when I need to. I know all this, but I do want to get back into the routine. I don't need to be this structured for less than very important races, but I do need to workout the routine and get my timing down. 

I need to re-learn how to trust my body and my mind again when in the middle of a race. Trust is quiet and calming.  Self-Doubt is noisy.  

I need to not use the watch to tell me what I am doing. The watch is a liar. It always is. I never race well when I use the watch to tell me things. I race my best when I use the watch to collect data for me while I use my breathing and the sensations in my legs to set my pace. I am out of practice being in tune with my body. I am out of practice negative splitting.  It has been awhile. I just need more race practice.  I look forward to it! 

Week-to-Week, this blog may seem pretty boring, but I am hopeful this will become meaningful to me (and maybe others) once I work though this training cycle and see what Dave and I can do. I am sharing the workouts we decide to do, showing where we are starting from (the bottom) and anticipating that we will create momentum all the way the leads to Dave and I having some great marathon experiences together.  This is my real life training.  It is the good, the bad, and the ugly. Maybe someone will be inspired.  Maybe not.  Maybe I will simply enjoy seeing how far I can go in a few months of training.  We shall see. :) 

So week three is done. Another week down and I am happy to have completed the three hard workouts on the schedule.  

The plan underwent some revisions based upon how Dave and I were feeling. It is so easy to write out an entirely too ambitious plan when you are writing one for yourself.  I am alway more conservative and more realistic with my athletes than I am with myself.  This is because I know that I will absolutely revise the plan to set me up to succeed without self-judgment, whereas my athletes often experience a revision as an indication of failure... which is never the case.  

So this week Dave and I decided:

(1) The long runs I had hoped to do were clearly too ambitious. The heat/humidity was too much for me (Dave probably too) to tolerate without any acclimation under us. And I haven't run long in a long time. So Dave and I decided we would take a few weeks to build up to 20 miles LR without any pressure to run any specific pace. After we reach 20M, we will take a rest week and then start working on Fast Finish long runs from there. 

Here is the week mostly in pictures. 

Tuesday Speed Alternates: For those following along, I meet Dave on Tuesdays for speed. I developed a new systematic progression for us to torture ourselves with. They won't get truly hard for a while, but right now we are laying the foundation for that hard work.  

This week we ran 9M with 6M of them speed work consisting of .3M hard/ .7M Recovery. This was a bump up by .1M of the hard running from last week with a decrease of .1M of the recovery. We will repeat this on week 4 as well.  During the hard run, we try to run as fast as possible. I don't have any window to target. I don't even look at the pace, I just run as hard as possible until it is time to stop.   

I am happy to see that our speed is getting faster.  Last week during .2's we were actually slower.  Lap 13 was our last hard burst and I am so happy to see a sub-6 pace there.

I went home and did some Resistance Training. Just body-weight stuff at home.   

Wednesday is my Rest Day. I just walk the dogs. I need to get in some flex work but this is always hard to feel motivated to do. I don't know why.  I know it is not just me.  I know many people who would rather do anything else but stretch or foam roll.  

I did make green soup. This is awesome. I have been buying bags of greens faster than I can eat them (clearly I have good intentions but I buying without checking what I need).  I blended a few bags of greens into chicken stock with sautéed mirepoix and some quinoa  I added some Enzo olive oil and red pepper flakes at the end. This stuff is amazing. 

Thursday is Hill Day.  The one rule of "The Tour of Morristown" Hill Day is no one is allowed to turn down a hill.  If we can go up, we choose up over down.  It is like the rules of improv comedy, you are not allowed to say "no"... no matter how ridiculous the idea.  

Friday is another day with Kim.  We do her LR on Mondays, so Friday will be a little easier.  Today was a 6M run/walk day. It was hot/humid and it slowed us down. But we got it done. 

Saturday was my 16M Long Run (any way I could do it). It was so freaking hot. It "felt like" 90 degrees on my weather app but in real life it felt like I was running in Hell. At mile 12, I contemplated calling Sidney to come get me. But I decided I could get myself home even if I was slow.  I knew pace didn't matter and starting my run at 11:00 am meant I was going to suffer, so I wasn't shocked it felt so bad.  I lost 7 lbs on this run from dehydration it was that hot.  But it got done and I know I will be better off for having done it. 

Sunday is my standing 8-12M run with Alanna. We drive 45-50 minutes each way to meet to run.  We don't care really what we do, we just know that if we are getting up early to meet it needs to be between 8-12. Sometimes we do more but not today!  

Today I felt like I was run over by a truck.  I needed to keep the pace easy.  I added a lot of walking. I carried water which I rarely do but no calories.  By mile 8 I was so incredibly hungry. I hit the wall hard.  This is such a great sign for me.  I know it means I am changing.  

This is how it starts. I chase after this bonk. I want to look it in the face and tell it that I am not concerned.  If I can get used to feeling this way in training, when I show up on race day, well-rested, well-fueled, well-trained, "The Wall" just doesn't exist. Today it existed and I was actually happy to run into it again.  I haven't run into that wall in a long long time. 

Stats and prediction for the week: Apparently STRYD believes I am getting slower.  Thanks! Garmin has me the same.  
​
I did my own calculations, which my athletes can tell you that I am quite good at.  Based upon our speed work, I believe we have the speed for a 3:20... but only once our LRs are up over 20. So right now, we aren't in 3:20 shape.  I hope to be by August. 

Week Two is done.

Three workouts. Speed work, Hills, Long Run. Nothing monumental. Just more work than I have been used to doing. My body is reacting to the load. I expected to feel beat up as I return to training..  

Tuesday' Speed with Dave.
We repeated last week's workout (.2M Hard/.8M easy) but the weather was 25 degrees hotter and humid. We didn't meet the goal of running faster than last week but we did "good enough" work.  I want to see our bursts in the low 6's, and eventually sub-6 if possible. We shall see. 

We also a new route which was not a keeper. Too many intersections and uneven sidewalks  slowed us down.  We will return to last week's route next week.

After the speed work, I did only about 20 minutes of strength work. 

Wednesday, I woke up feeling some ache on the bottom of my left foot by the heel. It felt bruised. Not like PF but more like I steeped on something hard? It wasn't horrible but it did make me not want to stand on my left foot for too long. Thank goodness Wednesday are rest days from running.  Dogs got walked and then I went to work. 

Last weekend, I noticed the hill repeats were still in my legs by LR day, a bit too much than I wanted to feel them.  It was 85 degrees last Saturday, so the sudden heat wave slowed me down anyway.

Regardless, I made a decision to move hard hill repeats (the 16% grade climb) to the Thursday before the easy LR, not the Thursday before the hard LR (which we will do every other week to accommodate our schedules).  On alternate Thursdays we will do a longer very hilly run but the grade will be less than 16% for most of the climbs. This will be easy to recover from by LR day. 

Fridays are Kim's easier day. Still using Walk/Run.  .
This run was 5M.  Nothing was swollen so off we go. Easy pace just to be safe. 

47M total with 42M of running (maybe 42.5?). 

I did two strength sessions only because I wanted to rest my heel.  I also failed to do any flex for no good reason. 

After Blood Donation on 5/24, my RHR is now back to 49.  This is good. 

Predictions:

STRYD Predicts my Boston may be a bit faster that last week.
Garmin didn't change, except to tell me that I am "Unproductive" lol

That is all I got for this week!  
​Let's see what happens in a week from now. ​

It's time to start blogging again. Rather than focus on races only, this time I want to track my weekly training through Boston... for better or worse. :)  Expect a lot of photos. This log will help me have something to reflect back on when race day comes and I need to remember how far I have come from 5/31/21 - 10/11/21. This is all for me. Follow along if you wish. 

Pre-Training: To Train Solo or To Build a Team? Finding the right locations. Building the plan. Donating blood. 

Last time I trained, I did it all solo. I am happy I did this. Everyone should train through at least one marathon training cycle solo. It will change a person for the better.  Last time, I needed to just focus on my recovery from my sepsis surgeries in 2019, I did not commit to meeting anyone so I could make decisions as I went along that were best for me. As a result,  I was so happy to run a 3:03 at Charleston 2020 before Covid shut down racing.

I was not so happy to have sustained a significant injury (osteitis pubis, which is basically the tearing away of the muscle from my pubic bone) at the end of that training cycle. This injury took me about 9-10 months to heal well enough that I don't think about it or notice any tightness when I run.  During that time, I was very sedentary, lost my endurance, lost my strength, lost my fitness in every way.  I have a lot of work to do. 

Now is time to get back to work.  After a year or more of forced isolation, I decided this time I NEED to train with the others, especially those I care most about most on this planet,  who I know will be my biggest cheerleaders, my biggest motivators, my biggest fans when I need their support and encouragement, as I will be all that for them as well as they training for their own personal goals too!  

At 45 years old, I have noticed for me training is starting to feel harder.  Having a team of best friends to train with feels like a very powerful secret weapon.

So no matter what happens, I want to say right now how grateful I am to  Sidney, Kim, Alanna, and Dave for being the best training partners I know. Without you all running by my side, I know that I would never have as great of a chance to achieve my next best races as I do when you all are there early in the morning, in the heat of the summer,  in the rain, on the trails, on the hills.  Whatever I end up doing in Boston (0r any race before it) it will be in a big part because of all of you and everyone else mentioned in my blog as I go along!).  

Dave committed to racing out in the mountains as a last long run before Boston, where hopefully all this work he does will get him a new PR.  He also agreed to meet me for the hard workouts (the hills, the speed, the fast finish long runs). But we weren't sure where to train.

We took a month before training started to explore different training destinations.  We settled on road-based speed work by me one day a week and hills by him one other day per week. Hard Long Runs will happen on the route we used when we last trained together and both PR'd back then. 

Kim is returning to training after her knee surgery and agreed to meet me for my General Maintenance runs were pace doesn't matter but company does!.  Alanna agreed as always to help me keep the volume hight by doing my easy LRs with me whenever possible. 

Sid, Yazzy, Lapis and Piper will keep me moving when I am home.  

WIth this team in place, I felt excited to get to work.

I built our plan to start on May 31. I wrote some new workouts that will be challenging yet exciting! I want to get us off the track. Our speed will take place on the roads. We will use a systematic progression to alternate bursts of speed with recovery running. We will slowly grow the speed duration while shortening the recovery.  

I want to spend time running repeats on the steepest hill we can find, because our mountain race will require a LOT of downhill tolerance.  I want to alternating those repeats with a medium length run on a very hilly course.

Once we found our optimal locations, both Dave and I were excited to start.  But we decided to wait until 2 week after his 6-Day race to give him some time to recovery from running 356 miles in less than a week. 

The last thing we did during our Pre-Training phase was donate blood. Blood donation is important and very necessary to save lives. There is not a lot of scientific evidence about the impact of blood duration on endurance athletes.  Most of it says "Don't do it when in training because you will lost 2-4 weeks time to train hard."

Available research has identified a 2-4 week period of time when training hard will feel horrible due to low RBC. It takes 2-6 weeks for the body to replace those RBC. But after RBC have been regenerated, they will last 120 days. 1-1.5 months after blood donation performance should feel much easier. 

I am not sure if training hard during that 2-4 week low RBC window will do anything to stimulate a super-compensation of RBC in a way. That would be helpful to us as runners but there is nothing in the research that shows this is possible. If it happens then that will be a bonus for us. If it doesn't happen and we get back to our RBC in 4 weeks, training should feel a million time better by then compared to what we are putting ourselves thought during weeks 1-4. I think just that shift will help with motivation to train hard.  Regardless of the impact on training, we still each saved 3 lives before we got so deeply immersed into training that we missed any window to donate.

It has been almost 2 weeks since we donated. I noticed that one week after blood donation, my RHR rose from 48 bpm pre-donation all the way to 60 bmp on 5/31.  But on 6/5, less than two weeks later, my RHR reverted back to 48 bmp. Running fast and running hills felt terrible when my RHR was 60 bmp. I have no evidence that I felt better when it lowered back to 48 bpm because the weather change during that time was extreme (from 40-50 degree runs to 75-85 degree runs).  I have felt horrible running due to the heat after my return to 48 RHR. Give me a cooler morning and then I can make a better assessment. :) 

Tuesday I met Dave for "speed" but I wasn't sure how we would do since we both felt sluggish after he blood donation.  We decided to run 6M of .2M repeats as fast as we could comfortably hold with a .8M jog recovery.  Our speed pace was 6:14-6:30 pace. That is fine for week one. 

Thursday,  Dave and I ran our hills repeats through a significant storm.  The rain was so hard that we got splashed from head to toe by a car driving though a huge puddle and it didn't impact how wet we were at all

My data doesn't reflect the amount of work we did out there. But my butt and quads knew it. :) The work here was 7 x .1M 16% hill repeats. Maybe next time we run this my watch will get me some real elevation gain data? I hope. 

My Saturday LR was supposed to be a Alternating Fast Finish LR with Dave but he had to be in PA and the heat was entirely too much for me to tolerate. I was solo for this run and just decided to get the mileage due to the heat crushing my soul. I needed walk breaks to get through it but I am grateful I got the mileage.  I drank 50+ ounces of fluid and still came home exactly 4 lbs lighter.  It took a lot out of me to get this done.   

I tried a new energy drink mix, Roctane Summit Tea.  I like Roctane anything because of the added amino acids.  This was tolerable.  I do think I prefer Optimal Nutrition Fruit Punch ProBCAA better than the last of this, but the BCAA have only 10 calories.  I wanted something for energy today and this did the job.  

Sunday with Alanna ended the week. The heat was tough. 75-85 degree for this and I felt beat up from the LR yesterday.  I have mixed feeling about this. I miss being so fit that I could run 20 in one day not over one weekend. But I am excited to see how my fitness grows over the next few months.   

Just for fun I am tracking what STRYD and Garmin predicts for my marathon time.  This is what I got this week.

Dave and I are also keeping an email chain going entitled Training Topics: There we are discussing any training related.  

This week we discussed taking iron to supplement our RBC development since we gave blood.

We discussed Walking as "deliberate practice" for Good Running Form and identified keep elements to efficient form that we want to reinforce when running and walking as much as possible.  

We discussed eating more protein during training and what types of protein we prefer. 

Add some dogs walks, a short run with Yazzy, lunch time walks and my mileage was 55,1 Miles moving with 48.0 Running.

​I did two strength sessions and one flex session as of now for the week. That might change. 

I am tracking my body composition during this journey. At the start of the week, I was 126.2 lbs (23.1% body fat, 30.1% muscle, and 57% Water) at the start of the week and 122.8 (22.3% body fat, 30.5% muscle, and 57.6% water) by the end.

That's all for the week. I look forward to documenting how next week goes for my reflection come October.