Richmond Marathon Training Take 2 - Week 3

This past week we Central Virginians got seriously spoiled by some beautiful (and atypical) June weather. Low to mid-80s, low humidity and sunshine for the second half of the week. If only it could stay like that for the rest of the training cycle...

3 runs for 19 miles (is this really  marathon training??)
11.5 miles on the bike
1000 yards swimming

Running miles logged so far: 52

Training highlights:

• An absolutely beautiful 5 mile tempo run on Wednesday morning with a group of fellow Navy team members. It was nice to be joined by Greg, Lauren, and Sarah and I hope the group continues to grow.
• Another MTT training run spent in the top pace group. We have nicknamed ourselves the "Navy Flyers". We were supposed to aim for an average pace of 8:50 but ended up more like 8:35. I know that long runs are supposed to be slower, but I reaaaaallllllllly wanna sub-4 this marathon, so I figure if I push myself to maintain 9:00 or under during MTT runs and then go even faster for tempos and speed training, I'll have a better shot.
• Returning to the pool on Thursday was a nice change from the stationary bike. I see more pool time in my future. 

Training lowlights:

• Getting rained out on Monday morning and being forced to run on the treadmill
• A persistent pain in my butt. You can look forward to a longer entry on that later.

Unfortunately that nice, non-humid weather has gone out the window and more typical (read: disgusting and uncomfortable) Richmond summer weather has moved in. It is so steamy right now that just the walk in from the parking lot to my office makes me sweat.

It's the kind of weather that is nasty no matter how early you get up to run in it. Therefore, I'm not looking forward to any of my training runs this week and I am extremely thankful that the MTT run is a drop back week and only 7 miles.

Also pretty sure that I have been valiantly fighting off a summer cold for the past 4 days. I know lots of folks who have been struck down by it. I'm really hoping I can activate the superior immune system and kick it because once it goes full-fledged, it's not pretty and tends to be hanging around people for a long time. 

So... onwards with training week 4; hoping that my butt, immune system, and Richmond weather don't bog me down too much.