7 Weeks & 6 Weeks Until the Dublin Marathon

Hello!

First of all, thank you for reading this blog. Sometimes I wonder why I continue to document my life here, and a big part of it is for my own personal journal of sorts, but I also am really glad there are people out there who still follow along. Thank you!

If you missed it, I shared a recap of our trip to Bordeaux and the Marathon du Médoc HERE and a recap of the week leading up to it. But it’s been two weeks now since that race experience, so here’s a recap of how training and life has been since then as I look towards the Dublin marathon at the end of October!

Monday: Still in Bordeaux. Dustin and I ran 5.75 morning miles in Bordeaux before a final day of wine tasting and exploring Saint Émilion and then a closing gala with the Marathon Tours group.

What fun this trip was, and how wonderful to share it with my sister and her husband. Some really special memories.

Tuesday: Travel day, no running. We took the train from Bordeaux to Paris, and then the Eurostar from Paris back to London. I squeezed in some strength training and core when we were back in London. Our pups were happy to see us, though they were well taken care of by our wonderful dog-sitter, Fiona.

Wednesday: Run with Susan from the Mornington Chasers, 8.6 miles before work. Core and some upper body strength after work.

Thursday: Tempo Thursday! Warm-up, 12 minutes on, 2 minute recovery jog, then 2×6 miles on with 2 minutes in between, cool-down. 7.1 miles.

Friday: I was excited to have company for an early Friday morning long run with Tilly from the Mornington Chasers. London was hit with a heat wave, so we started at 5:15 am (the earliest that I think that I have long run since moving to London!) and covered 13 miles together. Great company. I was showered and logged onto work earlier than normal, it was grand!

Saturday: The reason I did my longer run on Friday is because we were moving to a new place on Saturday!

I ran 5 early miles with Ruth before we spent the rest of the day moving (in the middle of a heat wave of course- and no A/C in London!)

I guess technically for the first half of the day, I was primarily in charge of keeping the dogs away from the movers; one of the movers had a severe phobia of dogs. So I mostly took them for walks and then hung out in the garden while the movers packed (we packed some of our stuff, they packed the fragile items and the kitchen.) By mid-afternoon, we were all set up at the new house. The new house is only about 0.6 miles down the road from the old one, still in the Hampstead neighborhood (NW3), but soooo much better. I really love it- almost too much, which is oddly concerning when my heart belongs to our house in Minneapolis, ha!

But its in a fabulous location (in my opinion) and just a really unique house architecturally. I’m really grateful that we found it and could rent it.

Our garden overlooks the Hampstead swimming ponds, but we still have the busy-ness of London with shops, restaurants, a train station, etc. in the front.

And guess who was at those Hampstead ponds just last week (when we were busy moving, ha!) One of these days I’ll see him around Hampstead…

Of course it was a LOT of work moving, but it was totally worth it to find a place I really love. Come visit friends!

Sunday: It was still very hot in London, too hot for Ruth to run, so Dustin and I ran 7 miles together, took the pups to the Heath before spending most of the rest of the day unpacking, settling in, grocery shopping, etc. I was exhausted by the end of the weekend…

Summary: Just over 40 miles of running; I treated Médoc as a training run for Dublin, but I still was tired from covering 26.2 miles, so I was happy with a cutback in total mileage (particularly the long run) this week.

Monday: I worked from home to hand over keys to Ruth’s doggy daycare driver; I decided to head out over lunch for some trails in the Heath, just 4 miles, but felt great to move a bit. Core and lower body strength after work.

Tuesday: Run commute! 4.5 miles, then a social 5k with some people from the office, 3.1 miles for 7.5 miles total.

Wednesday: Workout Wednesday! Warm-up, 12 minute tempo, 5 minute recovery jog, then 6×3 minutes on with 1 minute jog in between, then cooldown. 8.5 miles total.

Thursday: 6 miles with Ruth; I decided to run with her along the canal to Camden Market and we came across the filming of a show along the way! They asked for our consent to potentially be shown running past in the background. Of course! I have no idea what show, but why not?

Friday: 7.25 mile run with Ruth, with some in the Heath on the trail, some on the road in the neighborhood down to Regent’s Park. It was a cooler morning and smelled like fall! It got hot later in the day, but that morning temp made me remember just how much I love fall running.

Saturday: 16 mile run with Dustin down the canal to Victoria Park and back. It was much hotter than I expected, so we did stop at M&S for a Lucozade refill.

Of course, after the run was a long walk with the pups in the Heath. Then we took the tube to the Bermondsey area of London (by London Bridge and Borough Market) for the Bermondsey Street Festival, which was a good time. And post 16 miler, I was ready to try all the foods at the festival, ha! So hungry.

Bermondsey is a really neat area, I enjoy exploring over there and the festival was a good reason to head that direction (south.)

Sunday: 5 mile run with Ruth & Dustin on the trails in the Heath

Summary: Back up there again with weekly mileage! 55 miles of running, 2 days of strength and an attempt at daily core.

I’m linking up with Running on the Fly and Confessions of a Mother Runner; check out their blogs to connect with other fitness bloggers for workout ideas and inspiration!