On October 8th, I will be running the 40th Chicago Marathon as part of team Ronald McDonald House Charities.

Monday

After bragging last week about not missing a Monday, I missed a Monday. I traded my rest day for Monday after not sleeping very well and having super sore legs.

Tuesday

I cannot begin to tell you how happy I was to only see 4 miles on the schedule this week. My speed workout was 200m fartleks. If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering what in the world that means. Fartlek is a Swedish term that means “speed play”. Thanks Google. I really liked this workout and it went by so fast!

1 mile warm up
200 meters
30 second recovery
x 12
1 mile cool down

I couldn’t bring myself to put in my target pace as 7:45-8:15 because I didn’t truly believe that I could pull off paces that started with a 7. Once I got out there, I aimed for this pace, but my watch thought I was going for 8-8:30 so I heard the “slow down” beep a few times. My paces ranged from 7:51-8:18. and I only went over 8:15 for two splits. Now I just need to reflect this when planning for my future workouts.

Wednesday

I rode on the spin bike and read for class.

Thursday

This was supposed to be another consistent tempo run and I thought it was going to be easy since it was only 4 miles, but it was the toughest run of the week. My splits were 10:31, 10:05, 10:14, and 10:11 but I struggled through every mile. It was crazy humid and I was spent.

After work, I headed back to the Y for piyo! It felt so good to stretch and get a good strength workout in.

Friday

Rest day!

Saturday

The schedule called for 10 miles on Saturday. It was nice to only run 10 miles which wee joked about it all week. We ran in our neck of the woods again, which meant I could sleep until 4:35am! The run was good, but really humid and then hot once the sun came up. We walked a little bit during the last few times, but we got it done!

Sunday

I slept in on Sunday and put off my run all day since we were hanging out with friends and doing stuff around the house. I was planning to meet some of the girls at 5pm for our run, but of course it was raining. I opted for 4 miles on the treadmill at home. I am usually really bad about working out at home, but I got it done. After dragging all day long, I actually felt so much better.

Since our mileage dropped this week, I went into the week thinking it was going to the easy. I was very wrong. Coming off 18 miles on Saturday was hard and the cutback week was definitely needed. I struggled more this week than I expected.