A (Good) Step Back

So last week was a “step-back” week in marathon training, and not very exciting. But I don’t want anyone think I am giving up so soon, so I will write about it anyway.

It was kind of disappointing to me to run such a light week, but it was probably a good thing with the holiday tucked into the middle of the week there. Sneaky, sneaky holiday. I need to remind myself that these step-back weeks are packed in for a reason: my body needs to recover. I’m glad I took full advantage and look forward to crushing 10 miles this Saturday.

Also, my Tuesday maintenance run last week was AWFUL. My legs hurt so much, I probably walked over 1/3 of my 3 miles, which made me sad after how triumphant my 9 mile longrun was. I took Wednesday off and drank too many G&T’s instead. Thinking rest had cured me, I hit the dreadmill on Thursday to try to address any stride problems that might be causing my ankle/calf/shin pain. It was a total bust and I gave up after a slow and gimpy mile to hit the stationary bike. I did almost 20 miles and felt pretty good afterwards. Cross training rocks.

After having such a rough training week and knowing that it was going to be another hot hot hot weekend, I opted to do my “long” (only 5 miles) run on the dreadmill on Friday evening. I actually executed a fantastic 5 miles at 11 min/mile pace and only took one short walking break to drink. My legs bothered me a bit at the beginning of the run, but I pushed through and they loosened up by mile 2. I think the difference was that I dragged my Boston 3’s into work in place of my minimal New Balances. The moral of the story may be that my crazy pronating feet just aren’t able to handle this amount of mileage without more support.

Boston 3's

So far, I’ve been running all of my long runs in the bulkier Adidas Boston 3’s, but still breaking out the NB Minimus trail shoes for my 3 milers. Those days are over. The NB’s will still be great for biking, hiking and lifting, and maybe even as race shoes for 10ks and shorter, but their days of regular running are over for me.

Beautiful NB 10 Trail's

Sadly, even the Adidas are probably a little on the “light and fluffy” side for the kind of mileage I’m about to start taking on, since they’re more of a marathon racing shoe. I’m thinking of retiring them until race day after I successfully break into the double digits this weekend. I figure that then I can invest in some hefty training oriented shoes and save the beautifully broken-in Adidas for shorter runs and race day. Yay!

So that’s where we are after a step-back week. I jump up to 5 mile maintenance runs and a 10 mile long run this weekend, so wish me luck!