Week 4 of Chicago Marathon Training

Honestly, I am still exhausted from last week and a weekend's worth of celebrating little Andrew's 5th birthday.    Here is how the week went down.

Someone partied too hard!

Monday:  Rest day and Andrew's actual birthday!  We gave him a choice, he could eat anywhere he wanted to for his actual birthday.  We tried to get him to go to a place where they would sing and he would get a free desert but nope, the chose Mcdonalds.  Oh well:) .

Pretty clouds over Hyvee

Tuesday:  400 meter repeats x 8.  I don't like speed work all that much, but I do like shorter repeats because of walk back recoveries.  Coach always gives me the choice of a slow jog or a walk on recovery, and I always choose a walk!  I really like nailing my paces and then walking back to the start.  Coach gave me a range of 9-9:10, and other than having to get Melly to go first so I could chase her, we had no problems hitting our paces despite the wind.

Wednesday:  Cross training and strength.  I just couldn't make it out of bed, so I chose to battle the heat and get a ride done post work.  I cued up my favorite new podcast My Favorite Murder and headed out for an hour ride.  Post ride, I had a quick snack and hit the upstairs for my strength training.  Coach is using the book, Quick Strength Training for Runners for my exercises now, which was nice to have the pages bookmarked for the exercises I needed to do.  I was able to do all exercises 3 rounds in 25 minutes.  Again, so motivated to hit my calorie goal which makes me motivated to work out.  Sad right?

Thursday:  5 miles easy with 5 x 30 second strides.  I woke up with a wonky tummy and had to make a pit stop mid run, so strides just didn't happen.  No matter, got the run it and that is what counts.

Friday:  Strength and Cross Training.  Again, I didn't get up early to ride, instead riding post work.  It was feels like 105, but on the bike with the wind, again it was nice out.   I didn't get many miles in said hour due to the wind, but I got an hour done.  I was still pretty sore from the work out Wednesday, so I moved strength to the weekend.

Saturday:  12 miles.   I didn't get much sleep the night before. I tried to get to bed early, but andrew kept waking me up.  Then around 1 am, a huge storm hit and woke all of us up.  I got up around 4:30 feeling very, very sleepy.  Did I mention it was also 95% humidity and 69 degrees?  There was a light wind from the south, and I knew there would be lots of puddles thanks to the storm the night before, so I decided to take stella and make sure Tony had his phone just in case.

Got out the door around 5:50 am, round about the time the sun was rising, and got 12 muggy and hot miles in.  Stella stayed cool by jumping in and out of puddles and drinking all of her water that I carry for her.

I will be honest with you.  I totally blew out my diet for the day post run.  I have been doing SO well, and I just kind of fell apart.  I had a couple of doughnuts post run, which should be good enough for sweets for the day, but I just kept going with it.  Mcdonald's had their rolo mcflurry's on the menu (510 calories) and while it didn't taste as good as I remember it tasting, I ate the whole snack size cup.  Sigh.  Oh well, a cheat day every now and then is going to happen right?

Sunday:  Recovery run, Strength training, and MRYTL.  I had been so sore from strength on Tuesday that I had pushed it back as far as I could. I had intended on doing it Saturday, but the day got away from me.  I decided to sleep in a little, run, and then get er done.  We had plans to go see Cars 3 later, so I needed those extra calories :) . It was much cooler than the day before, but still 95% humidity. Oddly enough, the wind came from the north today which really helped cool things down. Deuce got to spend some mommy time and we walked a tenth of a mile every mile to stay slow and easy for both of us.   

When we got to the movie theater, we found out the dine in version was at 1 pm, and we didn't want to wait that long to eat.  Plus, we were there and he wouldn't have understood leaving and coming back.  We popped over to applebees (right next to the movie theater) for a quick lunch of appetizers (the only food that had lower calories and a small serving size) and popped back for the noon showing.  I even had enough calories to have one serving of my favorite bad snack, chocolate covered raisins.  Post movie, we headed over to the Discovery Center to see the latest exhibit and enjoy the air conditioning.  I feel like it was a great father's day for Tony, even if we spent it doing stuff andrew wanted to do:)

Total miles for the week: 27

Great week, both strength trainings done, MYRTL done, hip feeling better just tight and speed work DONE.  I am starting to see 135 on the scale occasionally (down from 142) and that makes me happy!  Great Father's Day and great weekend!  Have a great week!  Say a little prayer for me as I send my kiddo off for his very first day camp!