Week 4 of marathon training is in the books. The Vernonia Marathon is 112 days away. Here’s what last week’s training looked like from Coach Dawn’s plan:

Monday – Plan: Recovery pace, 4-5 miles with 4x strides after 2 miles. Actual: Ran 4 miles with 4 strides after two miles, average pace 9:53.Tuesday – Plan: Treadmill-Hills. Warm up 2 miles easy at 1% grade.
Increase grade to 7%, ease in and then do 3x 8-10 seconds fast at 7%.
Ease back down and recover 2 minutes at 1%, then repeat.
Recover 5 minutes at 1%.
Then do 7 minutes at 3%
Cool down at 1% until you reach 5.5-6.

Actual: This was a tough hill workout. I did all of the above. 7% incline is pretty steep and the 7 minutes at 3% seemed to drag on. I definitely wanted to just stop at 5.5 miles lol. I thought I had started my Garmin when I began the workout but I didn’t and I ended up starting it .37 miles in. My watch ended up with 5.01 miles while my treadmill was at 5.5 miles.Wednesday – Plan: Easy 6 miles, if you are feeling good, you can push the last mile to 8:20-8:30. You can also do a range of 5-7 miles depending on the target weekly mileage. Actual: I ended up running 6.36 miles. I had to stop to catch Pikachu with the Santa hat. 🙂 Last mile was 8:29 average and the .36 mile average was 8:09.Thursday – Plan: Fartlek. 15 minutes easy, then 6 x 45 seconds at 7:30-7:45
with 2 minute recoveries, then easy until around 6 miles. Actual: It snowed and I didn’t want to risk slipping in the snow so I ran on the treadmill. I had it at 1% incline most of the time and mostly 6.5 mph for the easy and 8 mph for the 45 sec. My Garmin had me faster than those splits but I’m not sure how accurate it is. I had a good workout though. My Garmin had me at 6.01 miles.Friday – Plan: Recovery run. Recovery pace, 3-4 miles. You can move this one to Sunday if you want this day off. + Drills with a few light strides after run or after a little warm up and stretch. Try barefoot if you can get to a field and it’s not too wet and cold. 🙂 Actual: I ran on the treadmill again, 4 miles at 9:39 average pace. Afterwards I did a few drills but didn’t do the strides.Saturday – Plan: Long Run. 12 miles total. Easy pace, with last 10 minutes at 8:40-8:50
Actual: I did not want to run this on the treadmill but wanted to get my run done early. The sidewalks still had snow/ice and it was dark so there was the possibility of slipping which I didn’t want to risk. So I resorted to the treadmill. It’s the longest I’ve ever ran on the treadmill. Mostly thanks to Netflix, it wasn’t too bad. The last mile according to my Garmin ended up being 8:36 average pace. I’m thinking the UCAN stuff really works. I used two servings before my run that lasted me the whole run which was almost two hours. I didn’t take anything else except hydrated with nuun. My Garmin was at 12.01 miles at 9:13 average pace.

Sunday – Plan: Rest day. Actual: Rest Day.

Total miles = 37.4 miles according to what my Garmin recorded. If I went by the treadmill stats it would be 38.02 miles. Either way I reached my weekly target goal of 36-38 miles. Things are going well and I’m still feeling good about marathon training. 🙂

As for the rest of the week:

Perry the Elf is having fun watching the kiddos.

The kiddos enjoyed playing in the snow.

On Saturday we watched the latest Star Wars movie, Rogue One. It did not disappoint and was fantastic!

How was your week? Watch any movies lately? How’s the weather near you? I’m ready to run outside!

I’m linking up with HoHo Runs and MissSippiPiddlin for the Weekly Wrap.