Weekly Roundup

This week ended Week 3 of marathon training, my first recovery week.  These are the highlights of how my week went:

- My normal easy Monday/Wednesday runs were just fine.  

- Tuesday was a tempo day, where I pushed a little for 5.5 miles, ending up with an average pace right around 7:45/mile.  The most notable thing of this run was my lower than normal HR.  Two weeks ago I did the same run, with only 1 beat per minute harder this time, but the pace difference resulted in 14 seconds per mile faster.  This tells me 2 things.  1) My body is becoming more efficient now that I am consistently training.  2) The effects of some slight weight loss are also adding some benefit.  You see, the honeymoon from a month ago added a good chunk of weight (not that I am complaining about eating too much of the amazing food in Mexico!) onto my body.  Since I've come back, I've noticed that running the pace I wanted too was a little harder than I rememebered.  So this week, I finally started turning the corner in the quest to get back to the weight I'd like to be at for the marathon.  I've now dropped about 2 lbs in these first 3 weeks, most of it dropping off this week now that my body recognized all this extra work.  And if I remember correctly, there is a correlation to the reduction of a couple seconds per mile for every pound lost.  Free speed!

- I used the Christmas Lights Run as my easy run on Wednesday, which forced me to keep the effort slow with constant breaks to sing songs.   

- The usual recovery week feelings of "I should be working harder" entered my head by the time I got to my long run on Saturday.  It was only 8 miles, which was barely enough time for my body to warm up and get into my running groove.  I started the run with Rebecca for the first 1.5 miles and then began picking up the pace, till I was near marathon pace for the last mile or so.  The rest of my run felt great.  Unfortunately though for Rebecca, things went down hill after we split up; I think she missed me too much ;)  Final numbers for the run were an 8:46/mile pace, which was good for a recovery week.  I did what the plan asked: took it slow, keeping in my mind that next week jumps to 14 miles and back to harder workouts.  So with that, the recovery week is in the books, and my body is ready to get back to building.

Hope everyone has a Happy Holiday this week!