Next Race, New Goals and Post-Marathon Recovery

So I signed up for a new race! It’s not a marathon, but it is something to look forward to and give me some training motivation! 

The race I signed up for is a half marathon called the Thankful 13.

Photo from Thankful 13 Facebook.

It takes place Thanksgiving morning at Thanksgiving Point, about 20 minutes from Ben’s parent's house (where we will be staying for Thanksgiving). I was planning on going for a longish run the morning of Thanksgiving anyways and this way I get a medal, a race shirt and a guilt-free day of eating! I am nervous about how cold it will be, but I am hoping to invest in some good cold-weather gear soon. I have yet to run outside since the marathon. It has just been too cold for the clothes I have right now.

Speaking of the marathon, recovery has been going really well. The week after I was able to run around 35 miles and bike 25 miles with Ben on our anniversary.

Anniversary, woooo.

I did have a little tightness in my ITB area, but with foam rolling and stretching it was gone by the one week mark. Last week, I ran 5 days for a total of 49 miles and did one day on the elliptical. I did a longer run of 16.5 miles this past Saturday and felt great the whole time. Well minus the part where I ate three bowls of cereal right before running and I felt like it was going to come back up for the first 7 miles… but other than that it was great. 

This week I started a new training plan for my half marathon. I found one online with high mileage looking to increase speed. I don’t really have a time goal for this half marathon. I mostly just want to have a fun Thanksgiving run and see how I race at that distance. However, if I want to qualify for Boston this spring/summer I need to pick up speed so it is good to start now and stay motivated through the winter. The plan I’m using has me running between 55-65 miles a week. One new feature that I’ve never really utilized in training before is the use of two-a-days. One day a week I’ll run between 5-7 miles in the morning and then run another 5 at night. I’m interested to see how my body reacts to that! 

I have also cut down the amount I am doing Jillian Micheal's Six Week Six Pack in favor of doing a real weight training regime at the gym.  For one thing, I have been doing six week six pack for almost six months now and I am pretty sick of it. However, I really feel like it did make me stronger and improve my running, which is why I want to take it a step further and do full on weight training. 

I found a website that shares two of the strength workouts Olympic marathoner Kara Goucher (my running crush) uses. One look at her and you she is doing something right besides just running 1.5 million miles a week.

Kara Goucher for those who didn't watch the entire 2.5 hour coverage of the Olympic women's marathon like I did...

So far I have gone through each of the two work outs a grand total of one time each at the gym. The weight area is really intimidating… Lots of guys looking at you like you couldn’t possibly know what you are going -- sad thing is that they're right. Anyways, I am planning on weight training two days a week and a third day of just abs as well as Jillian occasionally if I feel up to it. I’m a little sore today after yesterday’s session, but I got through my 6 mile recovery run this morning in one piece. 

I’m really excited to have this race coming up! It has taken a little bit of the pressure off deciding what marathon I am going to sign up for to try and BQ. Decision, decisions!