New Jersey Marathon Training Week 12

I’m still pretty tired after a busy weekend of races – including another 18 mile long run in preparation for the New Jersey Marathon!

I’m joining HoHo and Wendy for the Weekly Wrap – it’s always great to see what my fellow running/fitness friends are up to! I’m also joining Courtney for her Weekly Training Recap linkup and Marcia, Patty, and Erika for Tuesdays on the Run!

[bctt tweet=”Check out my latest week of training for the @Njmarathon – including running a stair climb and half marathon in one weekend! #njmarathon #runchat #bibchat” username=”Janelle_RWNR”]

Weekly Wrap:  Fight for Air Stair Climb and Love Run Half Marathon

This weekend was a busy one!  My coworkers and I been preparing for the annual American Lung Association Fight for Air Climb for the past few months, and since it was our 10th year participating as a company team, I was really hoping to make it a special year. You can check some of my previous recaps too! While the entire team couldn’t make it on event day, we had a fantastic time and I’m really proud of everyone, especially the first-timers.  I finished the 50 flights of stairs in about 11:11, a few seconds slower than last year.  As always, I try to pace myself early in the first few floors, but the struggle is real!  Bret participated this year and finished under 10 minutes, but he learned that it’s not as easy as it looks!  We were also able to raise an additional $500 for our team with a company bake sale that our Green Team helped support and promote.  It was hard work but we got it done: honestly, I’m just glad that it’s all over!  However, if you’re interested, our team is still collecting donations for the American Lung Association – we appreciate your support!

That afternoon we also had a birthday party to attend for one of our neighbors.  She is such a sweetheart.  We had a really nice time eating, drinking, and laughing with the neighbors.  I did my best not to have *too* much fun, and I think I succeeded…for the most part, lol!

I had an early morning on Sunday – I actually set the alarm for 5 am so that I had enough of a cushion to get ready to drive to Kelly Drive.  I had to apply my KT Tape on my knees in the morning and I didn’t even have breakfast.  I was a little bit out of sorts because I accidentally left my Honey Stinger Chews on the kitchen counter (oops)…I planned to do 5 miles before the Love Run Half Marathon (an impromptu decision I made a little over a week ago)!

I started my run a little bit after 6:30 am.  It was still dark out but I was soon accompanied by sunrise.  The weather was COLD and WINDY along the Schuylkill River.  My hat kept trying to fly off my head, it was so annoying!  But I was able to do those first few miles without incident, made a quick stop to the car to put on my bib and put away my Knuckle Lights, and finished up just short of the race start area.  Meanwhile, my buddy Tom was on his way so we met at the Rocky Steps prior to winding our way over to the race start.  We made it there at about 7:40…and 20 minutes later, we were off!

Our goal for the Love Run was to stay around a 10:30-11:00 pace.  This was my first race of 2018 and it’s always tough for me to hold back, especially at the start!  Fortunately, Tom was great about keeping us on track and slowing us down when I got too excited, lol.  My friend Katie along with her pal Stacey was right with us for most of the race, running a similar pace.  It was nice to see some friendly faces.  We had a cloudy, chilly day for the run; so much for spring!

My watch got all messed up running through center city – that was a first for me.  As a result, my distance was off by about 0.75 mile.  On top of that, I didn’t restart my watch for the race, so I was all thrown off, haha!  Minus a sudden urge to hit the Porta-Potty around mile 9 (thank goodness it was available), this race went pretty smoothly for us!  Sure, my knees still hurt…but it could have been a lot worse.  The section after the Strawberry Mansion Bridge was my least favorite part of the race and I was eager for it to be over, even with that brief downhill.  In our last mile, we worked hard to pick up the pace and had a really strong kick the last 0.1 mile or so.  We were hoping to beat 2:20 and we clocked in at 2:19:33!  I’m glad I was able to run this race with my friend.  We had a great time and even waited in the freezing cold for our hard-earned Yard’s beer!

What a busy, active weekend!! Today I ran the @loverunphilly half marathon. Thanks to having Tom as the perfect pace partner we had a great race, 2:19:33 with one of the strongest kicks I’ve ever had at the end of a race! So glad I signed up last minute, and it was great to run with my girl @katiegraceface for a while! Prior to the race I ran 5 miles on my own. I forgot my extra chews at home so considering only 2 chews in 18 miles…not bad! On Saturday I also had the @lungmidatlantic Fight for Air Stair Climb up 50 floors! I’ve done the event almost every year since 2009 but it’s a challenge every time! So proud of my awesome team including Bret who finally did his first climb and did a great job! Long story short, I’m beat! The @kttape helped my knees considerably for the long run, they don’t ache nearly as much as usual. Don’t forget you can stock up on KT tape for 30% off with code BIBRAVE30! Congrats to all the runners and stair climbers this weekend! #ad #loverunphilly #run215 #marathontraining #fitbloggroup #sweatpink #bibchat #bibravepro #RWNR #runhappy #cityfitgirls #halfmarathon

A post shared by Janelle (@runwithnoregrets) on Mar 25, 2018 at 3:27pm PDT

Workouts for the Week:

Monday 3/19:  I was thankfully able to make an hour of yoga.  We did a lot of work focusing on the hips, which I always welcome!

Tuesday 3/20:  The calm before the storm…I took the treadmill for my 5 miler.  I had some of my coworker gym buddies in attendance so the miles breezed by!  This was a tough fartlek: 10 minute warmup followed by 6 sets of 2 minutes at 9 out of 10 effort, 3 minutes easy, then cooled down.  I probably went a bit too fast on this one, but it felt good to challenge myself 2 minutes at a time!

Wednesday 3/21:  Another day another Nor’easter snow storm!  I declined going to barre class since I assumed it would be canceled.  I took advantage of the opportunity to relax since the week has been so busy.

Thursday 3/22:  Changed to a rest day since I went to a coworker’s going away Happy Hour.

Friday 3/23:  I ended up not doing any workouts. I was going to run my 5 miler but it just didn’t happen.

Saturday 3/24:  Fight for Air Stair Climb!  Later in the afternoon I went for about 3.75 miles, short of the 4 miles originally scheduled.  Just like last year, my sinuses and breathing were all out of whack after the event, so I didn’t push it.

Sunday 3/25:  5 miles early in the morning, then the Love Run Half Marathon!  I’m so happy that it all worked out!  Of course, every muscle in my legs hurt once I was finished!

Week 12 Report Card:

Total Miles for the Week:  26.8

Total Training Miles for NJ Marathon:   295.93

I’m extremely proud of getting through this week of training!  18 mile runs are always intimidating, but I’m thankful that I had Tom to get me through 13 of them and in good fashion!  Yoga was great, but I do wish I could have taken barre and did more strengthening work this week.  I think I’ve just been mentally exhausted from work and wedding planning that when I get home, I really have no desire to work out.  But I’ll shake out of this funk!

I’m going to give Week 12 a B+ since I did miss a 5 mile run.   I’m less than 5 weeks away from the New Jersey Marathon…the ish is starting to hit the fan!

How was your past week?  Is the weather feeling like spring for you?