Week 2 of Dopey training has been so much fun, I have found joy in pushing myself and seeing what I can do! This week we cut back on miles (you will find with Hal Higdon that every other week we are cutting back), this week we only had 4 runs with the highest mileage being 7 miles! One thing that I love about Hals training is these weeks, its cool to watch them grow week over week and I like the fact that we know after a long double, triple, or even 4 days of running in a row we have the next weekend with just 1 run! I guess I should also note that I am not anyway shape or form affiliated with Hal and his training program (even though that would be so cool!) I just love his style and that he got be through my first dopey, and PRing my marathon with COVID (I did not know I had it while running the marathon).
Monday started out with a great arm workout, Mondays are always our rest days and you will see has mileage starts to grow that I will use this as an active recovery day and do lots of stretching and yoga for runners! This week I was feeling good so I lifted and it was a great way to start the week!
Tuesday we had 3 miles!
I have been taking advantage of the lower mileage days to work on speed, I would love to run the marathon at a 10min per mile pace which would give me a finishing time around a 4:17, knowing that this is dopey and that my mental strength and physical strength will be tired at this point ( knowing from past experience!) if I could do this is would be like achieving Boston for me, however that is an A goal and my B goal is to finish around 4:30 which would give me another PR! As we all know we can do all the training in the world and be ready come race day and things dont always go as planned so C goal is always to just finish happy and healthy!
Speaking of speed work lets go to Wednesday
It was a 5 mile day and I did it at a 9 min mile tempo pace, I am really aiming to try to have my 5 mile runs right around 45 minutes right now as I know those are going to start to be my short run days (Tuesday and Thursdays) here in the next few coming weeks. This run gave me such a confidence boost in that goal finishing time of a 4:30 (yes that B goal and I will share more about why on Saturdays run!). I felt really good coming off this run and knew that my pop tart before my runs had been the big difference for me as I was fueling my body before pounding it with miles! If you new here nutrition is the hardest part for me with training and getting the calories in while running, I have been known to not fuel or do anything nutrition wise for any runs under 15 miles but am working on changing that this cycle to keep my energy levels up for those A and B goals!
Thursday was back to 3 miles, again a super great run and one that I was happy with. It went by super quick much like this entire training cycle so far!
Friday was another strength training day and I followed a total body lifting workout from a friend. It felt good and I was feeling strong and ready for Saturdays 7 mile run with my bestie Alex!
Saturday- When the A goal became the A goal and the B goal became the B goal with confidence!
Saturday morning I hit the pavement trail with Alex (y'all know her very well as she is who I trained and ran my last dopey with!) I really wanted this run to be one where I could gage where I could comfortably run for a long period of time. After my tempo run on Thursday I had the 4:30 goal time floating in my head and I loved that and felt good about it but something about a 10 minute mile pace for the full marathon kept speaking to me. Now little back story, I dont want to focus on time with this dopey, if you follow on the gram you know that Dopey this time is really all about building a solid base for myself before I start Ultramarathon training! Yes I am going to hopefully run a 50 mile race in May of 2023 and it was all my idea! I also have been struggling with putting so much pressure on myself when it comes to goal times that I have gotten super anxious and do not say any nice thing to myself, which no one wants! So going into dopey base building training back in June after running was the only thing I could do, I told myself no time goals. Well we can obviously see how well that went, but the focus on this training is really not the finishing time, its all about my base for this 50 miler. That all being said if I can run 26.2 miles after already doing 22.4 miles and do it at a 10 minute mile pace it would be a HUGE goal achieved and confidence boost for me. So when we were out on the trail I shared this with Alex and how that run was going to be a test to see how I felt at that pace, to my surprise, it felt INCREDIBLE! I was able to talk, the miles went by and when we finished I felt great. Something in me screamed that this was something I was so capable of and to set it as my A goal and if I got to race day and wasn't feeling it, that I still had my 4:30 goal and just finishing happy and healthy with a strong base to go into ultra training.
Sunday was a cross train day, so I went to the one I go to when I need a good non cardio workout Mr. Shaun T and he delivered as always!
Week 2 was a really fun week and one that brought new goals to life. I am so excited for how the rest of this training is going to go and to see where I am come race weekend!
To all my fellow Dopey runners, keep up the incredible work, you dont know how much each of you inspires me and I can't wait to meet so many of you in less than 16 weeks!
Love,
コメント