Steamtown Marathon Training - Official Week 1

Unofficially, I've been training for Steamtown since the beginning of May, so technically I'm wrapping up week 6 of training. But for the purposes of the blog, I decided to start my weekly training report once MTT started.

3 runs for 21.15 miles
1 hour of Bodypump

Running miles logged so far (counting 112.6 miles logged April 28 - June 1): 133.75
Same time last year: 114.4

Training highlights:

• A fun trail run on Monday morning.
• A GREAT choose-your-own-adventure style run on National Running Day with Kit, Greg, and Katie. We ran on trails, in parks, across the Dogwood Dell stage at Byrd Park, through the fancy pants neighborhoods, through numerous sprinklers, and ended with a moment in the VMFA sculpture garden. Completely spontaneous and 100% fun.
• Apparently someone does read my blog - and I met her on Saturday at MTT! After our run, a young lady came up to me and started by saying, "I know this sounds creepy but - I read your blog!" Turns out this young lady, whose name is Jackie, had found last year's training diaries thanks to Google and after reading them, decided that she would like to do MTT. It just so happens that she's on Team Midnight too! How cool. I was thrilled. Thanks for introducing yourself, Jackie, and welcome to Team Midnight!
• Dragging Husband to Bodypump class on Thursday night. I think he wanted to kill me by the end, but he did admit to liking it (a little bit). We will go again on Thursday, aiming for the 6 am class if we can drag our butts out of bed in time.

Our cars coordinate so well.
(Parked for our trail run)

National Running Day VMFA Ending

Training lowlights:

• Thanks to the Carytown Beer Festival (which was staged at the Diamond/Sports Backers parking lot... which isn't even in Carytown!), our meeting point for MTT was at Anthem headquarters this weekend. I absolutely detest going out from Anthem HQ - mainly because the neighborhoods in that area are very industrial and not fun to run in (read: there are no trees and it's ugly and hot). Sure enough, our route was all through the lovely industrial sections of Richmond. It was sunny, it was humid, and it was not fun.
• It seems that I got a bum pair of Brooks Ghost 6s this last time around. I purchased my current pair and started running in them at the beginning of April. I have logged just around 200 miles on them but they are completely shot. How do I know? My feet and the back of my left knee are absolutely killing me this week - surefire symptoms of my shoes needing to be replaced. Needless to say, I'm not very happy about this. So, yesterday I went to Lucky Foot, armed with my $30 gift certificate (for my age group win) and picked up a new pair of shoes. Last night I was laying out my clothes for this morning's run and I noticed that the new pair look smaller than my last. Because they were. My dumb self got a size 9.5 instead of a 10. So I had to run in old shoes this morning, which means my feet still hurt, which also means I have to go alllllllll the way back to Lucky Foot to exchange for the right size. To make matters worse, I had ordered an additional pair from Brooks because they are discontinuing the shoe and I figure I should stock up. Wanna guess what size I ordered? Yup. 9.5. HEADDESK. #runnerproblems

Until the FIRST/Run Less Run Faster training period starts at the end of this month, I plan to hold steady with two 6 mile run during the week (at tempo) and then long run with MTT with added mileage. Because Steamtown is a whole month earlier than Richmond, the Steamtown Contingent has to tack on some extra miles before each team run. But hey, it's ok - when everyone else is running 20s at the end of October, we'll be finished!