Richmond Marathon Training Take 2 - Week 11

Featuring LONGEST RUN EVAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

3 runs for 27.5 miles
2 miles of swimming
ZERO miles on the bike

Running miles logged so far: 219.5 

Training highlights:

• Sixteen miles on Saturday that felt remarkably (dare I say it?) easy. I was extremely nervous about going my longest distance ever (by two miles!), but just kept trying to tell myself that it was just another run like every other week. I didn't run with the guys up front this week and instead did the entire thing with team mates Theresa and Marie, who were awesome. After last week's horrific 11 miler, I was shocked at how good I felt as the miles seemed to fly by. I finished in 2:25:00 with an average pace of 9:05 - right on marathon target pace. AND I even somehow managed negative splits. Apparently, I'm doing something right. Here's a photo from around mile 12:

Me, Theresa, and Marie kicking some assphalt and looking like we
are having way too much fun on a 16 miler.
Photo courtesy of MTT Photos/Mark Buckland 

• After a tedious search featuring lots of padlocks and fences, a speed work track has finally been identified! Greg and I did Monday's session around a "track" at a local elementary school. It's more of a gravel path in the shape of a rounded square, but it works. I like having four equal sides, which makes it easier to divide up the intervals.

Training lowlights:

• My mile swim on Thursday was downright tough. After 800 meters, I stopped after every set of 200 and had to give myself a pep talk to finish. 
• I've decided that I hate the stationary bike and I'm sick of it.
• Foot discomfort has returned. It doesn't get worse with running, I pass the hop test, and htere is zero swelling. I can't call it painful but something is up. So I finally (sigh) made an appointment to see Dr. Cutter. It's on Wednesday this week. Blargh.
• My Garmin decided to up and die on me. I went to put it on for my Wednesday run and it would not turn on. I plugged it back into the computer. It wouldn't turn on. I plugged it into the wall. It's blank face mocked me. I may or may not have angrily thrown it. I tried a soft reset and a hard reset. I may or may not have thrown it again. Still, its blank face mocked me:

Nothing worse than an inanimate object
acting like a JERK.

Hydration belt status:

• I put it on for all of 30 seconds as I got ready on Saturday morning, then took it off and put it back in the drawer.

Gold star of the week:

• Navy Teammate Lauren, who brought icy pops for the entire team to partake of post-run on Saturday. I had forgotten how delicious the blue ones are.
• Garmin tech support. I called them on Wednesday as soon as I could. The tech that I talked to was awesome and after he heard what was going on, he decided to send me a new Garmin even though mine was outside of the warranty by 8 months. He said he was concerned about the power loss in a device that was less than 2 years old and wanted to get it back to them to check it out. All I had to do was send mine back to them and they'd send me a new one or fix my old one. As of this morning, I got a shipping notification email for my new Garmin. GREAT SERVICE, GUYS! 

I didn't write a lot this week because I was having a lot of anxiety about my foot being uncomfortable AGAIN and I know ya'll are sick to death of hearing my paranoid rants about it. All I will say now is that I am pretty confident this isn't a bone issue but something else... and that I don't have a lot of faith that we will figure it out on Wednesday. So I'm just going to keep on keeping on unless it gets more painful.

On a side note - has anyone else ever used Map My Run? I used it on Wednesday and Saturday to log my miles. I have never been a fan because of course it requires me to carry my phone (which I detest doing), but I also have noticed that it seems to be really inaccurate. On Saturday when we finished, the app said I went 16.9 miles compared to 16-on-the-dot on Theresa's Garmin. Though I'd love to say I ran nearly 17 miles, I know I didn't. Greg has used it in the past on runs that we've done together and we noticed the same thing then too. I'd hate to think that others are using it exclusively for their training and short changing themselves.