Philadelphia Half Marathon Training: Week 2

Week 2 of training is officially done, 8 more to go!

Philly half training: week 1

I almost feel like weeks 1 and 2 were more like “pre-training.” Long runs of 5 and 6 miles are barely “long” enough to make training feel legit to me. A 7 miler planned for later today though finally makes it start to feel real. I don’t just randomly run 7 miles unless I’ve got a reason!

Here’s what the plan looked like for week 2:

And here’s what went down:

Besides a switch up of my rest day, all went according to plan.

Monday:

Unlike week 1’s long run this one felt much easier. I started off slowly, didn’t take any breaks besides a quick stop to get the bug that flew directly into my eyeball out and finished with a 8:53 pace overall. Some random guy on a bike flew past me (scaring the crap out of me since I had my headphones on and didn’t hear him) around mile 4.5 and yelled back “looking great!” I have no idea if he was being serious or sarcastic but it kept me motivated nonetheless.

Tuesday:

I started NROLFW stage 3A and OH MY GOD my legs! Let’s just say that ending an already tough workout with 2 “body matrix” intervals of squats, lunges, and jumping squats & lunges makes it difficult to move the next couple of days. It was like Jillian Michaels in 30 day shred on steroids.

Wednesday:

How I even made my legs bike 15+ miles after NROLFW the previous day, I don’t know. Somehow I did it though and maintained a pretty good 14.4 mph on baby blue.

Thursday:

Mind wanted to run, legs did not. Ended up switching my rest day to give them one more day to recuperate.

Friday:

A wet tempo run on fresh legs.

The best part about running in the rain? Having the bike trail to myself. I passed one other runner and we both head nodded like “yeah, you must be training too otherwise you wouldn’t be out here.”

Saturday:

An 11+ mile bike ride with about a million dead bugs caught on my shirt, in my eyes and in my mouth. I might wear Ulysses’ motorcycle helmet next time because swallowing bugs is really getting old. After the bike ride I made my way to the basement for NROLFW 3B. This workout was way more arms oriented than Tuesday’s. Thank the good Lord.

Sunday:

3M pace run. My initial goal for these runs was to average 8:20-8:25 miles. I’m finding it very hard to maintain that pace though. My body either does 8:45 or 8:00. My average pace this run was 7:59. I need to work on slowing down a bit because there’s no point in running that fast, I definitely can’t maintain it for 13.1 miles.

Total Weekly Round-up

• Run: 13.5 miles
• Bike: 26.6 miles
• Strength training sessions: 2

On to week 3!

What did you do this weekend?

What distance do you consider a “long” run? I think half training warped my mind last year because now I’d say 7 but last year probably would’ve said 5. It’s all relative I guess!