Less than 10 weeks to the TCS New York City Marathon: Last week's training

The same week I post about being patient and ultra-attentive to any odd forms of tightness is the week that I must put it into practice. After completing a 12 mile tempo on Thursday, in which I was still feeling the lingering fatigue from the previous Sunday workout, I felt an odd, slight pressure in my left quad when sitting down. It certainly could not be described as pain, but after three stress fractures in a row, my instincts were telling me that it was time for some pool work. I have been aqua jogging for a few days now, and I am happy to report the everything feels normal. The slight pressure that I felt in that muscle was something that would not even register in my brain in the past, but I am more fragile now than I have been due to the required time off this last year, and I can't ignore anything. I will stay in the pool for an extra day or two just to be on the safe side, but I am confident that I am being paranoid and overcautious. Because the previous weeks of training have gone so well, I am not bothered by a few extra days of cross training at this point. I know my fitness is already at a solid level and I still have over two months to get it where I need it to be to have my best NYC Marathon.

I was thinking back to the Sunday workout from the previous week (4 mile tempo, 10 mile run, 4 mile tempo), and I had trouble understanding why such a high volume workout could possibly go so well with the missed training and lower volume base. There are most certainly permanent physical changes that occur throughout decades of intense training that do not disappear within a matter of months (or years). It is necessary to rebuild fitness after time off, but these physical attributes that have been forged allow you to return to a previous level of fitness much quicker than I could expect based off the initial first few weeks of running. This realization is giving me the strength to stay patient at this point in my build up. This idea is something I have preached to my own athletes, but it can be much more difficult to impose it on yourself. Fortunately I have my own coach to enforce this concept.

Thanks again for reading, and feel free to check out last week's training below. Looking forward to sharing my return to intense marathon training next week.

Weeks to go: 10	AM	PM	Strength/Drills	Mileage
Monday	11	5	1 hour	16
Tuesday	1 hour run + 6-8 x 200 meter hills	5		17.5
Wednesday	11.5	5.5	40 minutes	17
Thursday	12 mile tempo @ 5:02	50 minutes aqua jogging		16
Friday	90 minutes aqua jogging	45 minutes aqua jogging		0
Saturday	90 minutes aqua jogging	off	1 hour	0
Sunday	2 hours aqua jogging	off		0