Training Week 16

Two more weeks left.

This past week was the first week I felt a little of the "marathon crankiness" setting in.  I use to have this occur quite frequently during training in year's past- especially during my high mileage weeks, but after my little "fish tank" fun last summer I quickly realized no one should ever get cranky/grumpy when able to be physically able to train for marathons.  You should appreciate the ability and time you have for training.  I just couldn't get rid of my "ugh" towards my running this past week.  I was suppose to run 27 and only did 26- that always is bothersome to me, although 1 mile shouldn't cause you to fail at finishing a marathon. However, if you consistently don't finish your goal mileage for the week that can become an issue.  So I rarely like to miss my goal.  Then my slowness or lack of speed is still present.  I'm just running 10:15 min miles consistently and 10:15 min miles won't get me a PR for the marathon.

So I've been pretty "cranky" free, except this past week I started letting the self-doubt, voice in my head, set in.  Things I said to myself were: " Are you sure you have given it your all", " What if I don't PR the marathon?", "What if I get the bothersome pain tightness from hamstring that runs into both sides of my ass?", " What should I listen to- book on tape or spend $ and download new songs for an awesome Marathon Playlist?",

Really do any of these questions really matter?  Nope- Because...
Two weeks away and I've given all I can give; I can't change my training schedule or mileage now (people who try to pack it in at the end normally end up with injury prior to race day from over use or injure self on day of race.

So what if I don't PR- as one of my friends said "are you running to PR"- of course we all want to get better, but I'm running to finish something- a goal, to end healthy, have fun, and hopefully run fast, but if I don't run fast then not the end of the world.

If I do get hamstring/ass pain so be it- all I can do is foam roll  and stretch as much as possible and leave the rest up to the higher  being.

Lastly- my music/book selection is really trivial- lucky I'm in a race that allows Ipods, etc and lucky enough to own an IPod.

So I take a breath and can't believe I only have two weeks more left of my training schedule.  The time has flown by and I've trained on my own and know that my self-doubting voice  needs to go back to sleep for at least two weeks more.

Past week: 4.66 miles Tuesday a.m. was just dog tired and couldn't seem to push myself to do the full 5.  Wednesday did a speed work out on treadmill- 3 miles at great pace (8:50 mile pace), paid for it the next  day with sore tired legs during my 6 miler.  Then 12 miles Saturday a.m.  Cold and Windy out- feel like I didn't know how to dress for the weather- overall o.k. clothes, just needed to have gloves.

So moving onto this week- 4, 4, 4, 8- yep its a taper.