Mississauga Marathon Training, Week 3!

That's right folks I'm already in week three of my training for my second marathon which I'll run on May 5, 2013 in Mississauga! I had a great week of running, but the week did have its challenges what with 18 more kilometres then the week prior, snow, wind and five days running! Whew!

Monday was rest day. This was fairly easy to do. Of course!

Tuesday was scheduled to be a tempo day. I was working from home that day and had agreed to meet some friends for lunch at a Starbucks about 6k away from my house. I started the run with a 10 minute warm up and tried to settle into a 20 minute tempo pace (5:00/km), but could only hold it for 10 minutes (4:53/km on average). I took a bit of a break and then ran another 5 minutes of tempo (4:50/km on average) before cooling down to round out the run. This was difficult. It has been a while since I've run tempo and a long time since I've done so outside. 6km, 32:36

Wednesday was run club night at the Running Room and I joined the group for a 10k run. I was the only one I found who was going to attempt a 5:00/km tempo pace so I set out with the group for an easy 12 minutes before picking up the pace. While stopped at a light, I discovered that Wayne from our clinic was going to run with me! Hurray! We managed 10 minutes of tempo (5:07/km), a break (and wrong turn, whoops!) and then another 5 minues of tempo (5:04/km). After another break Wayne asked if we were going to do another round of tempo. I told him I could try, but didn't think I'd be able to hold it. He was fine with that as he had been prepared to tell me to go ahead! We enjoyed the rest of the run at an easy pace chatting and getting to know each other. 11km, 1:03:03

Thursday was our official marathon/30k clinic night and we had a speaker in to talk about Pose running. It was very interesting and I need to investigate some more. I was really looking forward to the easy running and settled in with Wayne again with Gerald joining us. The snow was blowing, but it was the soft stuff and not slippery at all. It made for a good end of run photo:

8.5km, 51:46

Friday was rest day. DONE.

Saturday's schedule had an easy 6km run on tap and I managed to fit this glorious run in between tumbling lessons for Fergus and lunch. I had one of those perfect runs and was reminded of that amazingly true Oprah quote:

Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it

6.25km, 36:05

Sunday Long, Slow Distance day! The schedule had 13km on it, but seeing as I had run a bit more then 15km last Sunday, I decided on 16km in total. Due to the wind storm, our power had gone out so I missed my 5:50am alarm, but luckily, we have Fergus. Fergus has a built in alarm for around 7am and once he crawled into bed with us, I got up and got out the door by 7:30. The wind was brutal. BRUTAL. Gusts up to 100km/hour. When I got outside I discovered that it was blowing mostly from the north so I decided on an out and back route which only saw me running about 1.5km directly into the wind. Unfortunately, the wind changed after my turn around and I battled it for the last  8km. These are the memories to pull on during the hard parts of the marathon for sure. Oprah's quote ran through my head a lot during this run and I may have cursed prayed to God a few times as well! Got it done though! 16km, 1:37:06

Total KM: 47.75, Total time: 4:40:44, Average pace per KM: 5:53