This week was interesting. I feel like I said that last week, but it’s true. They all have a little different flavor from the previous. This first photo you’ll see below is after a happy 5.08 mile run. I ran for a planned 70 minutes, and that’s the distance I ended with, in case those of you who like round numbers are annoyed. This was Tuesday, and I ran into town and turned around at 35 minutes (halfway, if you’re following). This run felt STRONG. I had no trouble with breathing or pain. My knee and ankle braces WORK! They supported my knee and ankle as they were designed to. Not only was I pain-free during the run, but I didn’t have any lingering soreness afterward.

This week I joined a local gym to take advantage of the weight machines so I can build some muscle, in my legs primarily. My son has a membership and he had been encouraging me to go, knowing I had been talking about finding ways to do some strength training to support my running. So instead of running Thursday we went together for Leg Day. I tried out all the machines and I was definitely feeling the burn the next couple of days! I think this is a good thing to incorporate into my training and will help me to increase my endurance without injuring myself. As long as I don’t push myself too hard. There’s a fine balance there, of course.

Then there is the “long run”. Which for this week, was a break from last week, so I only ran 4 miles. Also, I ran it a day early because we were taking the kids out of town for the weekend to do some exploring. Knowing I only needed to complete 4 miles, I pushed the pace a bit with this one, and it felt awesome. Again, I was feeling strong and had no issues. Look at my face though! I don’t even see any sweat. I was definitely feeling good here.

I mentioned that my family was going exploring over the weekend, and I plan to write a full post about it, but I’ll tell you we did a little bit of hiking. More than anticipated, however. I’m glad I wore my knee band, because they would have had to call a park medic to pull me out of the woods. I didn’t think to officially track our hiking, but according to my Garmin step counter, we hiked around 10 miles on Saturday. Yowza! Stay tuned, and I’ll tell you all about that later.

This week I ran a total of 9.08 miles but if you include an estimated 10 miles of hiking (which I am, cuz dammit that counts) that’s 19.08 miles in the books! 140.57 miles for this portion of the training + 193 half marathon training comes to a total 333.47 miles counting towards getting ready for this marathon. Next week’s menu includes strength training, a couple 75 minute runs and a 17 miler. Can she do it, folks? Or will she chicken out and go back to bed? Time will tell. Stay tuned!