Weekly Recap: Three Weeks Until the Big Cottonwood Canyon Marathon

I’m linking up with Jess at Jess Runs Atlanta again for my weekly recap! Join the link-up at the bottom of the post and your blog will be posted on both Jess’s and my blogs. Looking forward to linking up with you!

On to my weekly recap:
I have THREE weeks until the Big Cottonwood Marathon. Man, this training just flew by. I can’t believe I’m heading into my last big week of training. So excited to see 26.2 beautiful miles of the Big Cottonwood Canyon!

Training for those 26.2 miles this week was pretty intense, and it also included a trip to Napa for my sister’s 40th birthday (more of that to come- I’m drafting a Fits on the Road post about Napa!)

Monday: A short-speed workout in the morning: 2 mile warm-up, 8x300m sprints around a 6:50 min/mile pace, 90 second recovery between sets, 2 mile cool-down. (I program all these workouts into my Garmin 225, btw).  6.75 miles total.

I was tired from a 70 mile week last week, but I muscled through this one. The recoveries between sets were longer than the sprints, so it didn’t feel too hard. In the evening, I took an Arms & Abs class at [solidcore]. Loved it.

Tuesday: Easy 7 mile run in the morning (about 9:20 min/mile average) another 5.25 miles in the evening at run club (8:50 min/mile). It was raining for the second run, but we were rewarded by a gorgeous rainbow at the end of the run! 12.25 miles on the day.

Wednesday: My big workout of the week- 6 miles at tempo pace of 7:30. With 2 miles to warm-up and 2 miles to cool down, it was a long one- 10 miles total.

I chickened out of running this before work. I can squeeze in 10 before work if I am really efficient. But it wasn’t so much about the distance. Rather, it was intimidating to get up that early and have to work that hard.

So in the heat of the evening it had to be! Dustin and Matilda (my dog) joined me for part of the run. The first few tempo miles felt okay- 7:40, 7:32.

Then Matilda was getting pretty hot and we were stopping for her to take breaks: 7:53. Then I parted ways with the family and pushed it in for 7:36. The last two were slow: 8:09 and 8:00. The heat had really started to affect me. I’d like to think that the effort was strong, but there has to be an adjustment for the heat. 10 miles total at 8:34 min/miles.

Thursday: Really short turn-around from Wednesday evening’s tempo to Thursday morning’s recovery miles. I definitely need more time than that to really recover…But I got in the miles: 10 miles at a 9:35 min/mile pace. I’m glad I got up to get in the miles, as we had a 5 pm flight to San Francisco that evening.

All four of my sisters and three of the husbands converged in Napa Thursday evening for a very fun weekend of wine tasting (and running, eating, games, hot tubbing, shopping, exploring!).

Yes, I have four sisters. I’m the fourth of five- the sister on the left below is the youngest. I don’t think we have ever done a trip (since adulthood) with all five of us (and no kids). It was really special and so much fun. I honestly burned more calories laughing so hard my belly hurt than I burned running. I hope we do this sort of trip again soon!
Friday: Dustin and I were up and running by 7:15 local time. We covered 8 miles at an 8:40 min/mile average. The VRBO that we rented was right across from a park with about 4 miles of trails (hilly!) and then we ran the rest of the miles on the road. It was really lovely- beautiful scenery and cooler temps than we were used to. I felt like a million bucks! Runs like that are such a welcome change from the hot, humid, slow runs lately in Minneapolis.

The rest of the day was spent touring different wineries. For the sake of brevity, I’ll share more on our trip in another post.

Saturday: I ran with my sister Erin for 7 miles. She’s the dark-haired sister in the black striped dress above- the birthday girl for this trip! She is training for the Twin Cities Marathon (So excited to have her visit me!) and we ran the 7 miles around her goal marathon pace (9:45 min/mile). There were quite a few hills on our route and she ran very well. I’m excited to see how she does at Twin Cities this October.

Sunday: REST. All my sisters flew back home today, but Dustin and I decided to add on two nights in San Francisco. We spent the morning driving from Napa to San Francisco and then walking around and exploring. I wanted to do my long run in San Francisco though, after my sisters had left, i.e. I didn’t want to miss out on time with them to run 20 miles. So, it made the most sense to move my long run to tomorrow (Monday). Dustin is going to run with me and he has a fun 20 mile route planned for us! I have a feeling that we’ll get to see a lot of the San Francisco by running 20 miles of it 🙂

Summary: I’ll count my long run in the weekly total, even though technically I’m doing it tomorrow.  That puts me at 74 miles with one strength class (Arms & Abs) and one rest day. Big Cottonwood, here I come!

(P.S. Napa is so beautiful. I think I need to move here.)