Day 100

One hundred days since I started training for the Chicago Marathon! I've come a long way... I'd like to stop and reflect on my training so far, but I still have about a week and a half of good solid training before I'm planning on hitting full taper mode so I think I'll hold off on that. Instead I decided to honor the 100 day mark with a particularly grueling Wednesday workout.

I had 8 miles scheduled for today, and it's Wednesday so I wanted to run it pretty hard. I also wanted to get some speedwork in too so I decided pepper some hard mile repeats into my run, by alternating easy running and marathon pace running every other mile. Here's how my plan unfolded.

Distance: 8.0 miles (plus .5 mile cooldown)
Duration: 1:01:12
Pace: 7:39
HR Avg/Max: 156/179
notes:

Started out at a moderate pace but quickly started speeding up despite myself and ran the first mile in 8:09... at this point I decided to change my plan from alternating between E running and MP running and instead alternate between MP running and hard running. Here's the mile by mile breakdown.

Mile 1: 8:09 (feeling better than expected)
Mile 2: 8:03 (all warmed up and ready to burn)
Mile 3: 6:51 (woaw this feels fast, but I'm feeling good)
Mile 4: 7:55 (amazing how easy this pace feels relative to 6:51)
Mile 5: 6:42 (woaw, this feels really fast and I'm not feeling so good anymore)
Mile 6: 8:07 (amazing how this pace doesn't feel so easy anymore)
Mile 7: 7:56 (hit the first .4 at 6:51 pace, next .35 was up a steep hill and my muscles finally remembered the half-marathon from Sunday... heart rate averaged 172 and peaked at 179 during this stretch)
Mile 8: 7:33 (last mile... man I want to walk, but I can't quit now... time to see what's left in the tank)

Last mile and a half was horrid, painful, and the opposite of fun. I just wanted to quit, but I knew that pushing through the pain would help me when I hit the "wall" in the marathon so I pushed on. Glad that I did now because I feel great!

24 more days to the marathon and I'm trying to spend the rest of the time cleaning up my diet, shedding a few pounds, getting some last ditch polish on my fitness, and resting up with a good taper so that I can be in top possible shape come marathon day!