Last week was a recovery week for week 10 of marathon training. Recovery weeks are nice since it’s a cut back in miles and I get to rest some. 🙂 The Vernonia Marathon is 70 days away. Here’s what I did from Coach Dawn’s plan:

Monday – Plan: Easy 4-5 miles
Actual: Ran 4 early miles, avg. pace 9:40.Tuesday – Plan: Rest day.
Actual: Rest day.

Wednesday – Plan: Fartlek run. Keep this one loose and mostly unstructured. Don’t worry about your watch.. just thrown in around 6-10 pickups @ moderate-fast pace ranging from around 30 seconds to a minute, w/ recoveries.
Warm up and cool down around 10 minutes.
Aim for around 5-7 miles.
Actual: I kept it pretty loose and threw in the pickups when I felt like it. Ended up with 6.41 miles, average pace- 8:52.Thursday – Plan: Would like you to get to Forest Park or similar here, and start working some hills outside.
Forest Park
Aim for around 6 miles or 1 hr max.
Mostly easy, but find a decent grade hill and do a few uphill and downhill pickups. So ease into the hill and do 10-20 seconds fast (but not sprint) with full recovery. So you could just jog back down on the uphill strides. You can also stop and recover.

Focus on good form on the hills.. quick cadence up the hill. On the downhill, try not to lean back to much.. let gravity work for you. Here is video on form..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcBlGb0qgS8.
Actual: She gave me two options and I took the Forest Park option. I thought it would be good to do hills there. It was muddy in some parts where I was afraid I would slip, but most parts were fine. Had a fun time and the scenery is great! I ended up with 5.21 miles, avg. pace 11:19.Friday – Plan:5-7 miles.
Aim for pace around 8:40-50.
Drills x 4 after, + Core work (5 minutes is fine) + the 2 videos you did on 1/13.
Actual: Had a good run. I did the drills, core work and videos afterwards. Ran 6.6 miles, avg. pace 8:39.Saturday – Plan: Long Run. Just an easy 8-10 with 5x strides in the middle.
Actual: I ran 8.8 miles with the strides in the middle. Felt pretty good, avg. pace 9:13.Sunday – Plan: Rest day.
Actual: Rest day.

Total miles = 31.02 miles. I’d say it was a good recovery week. But it will be picking up quick with my biggest week next week. Target mileage is 48-50 miles. Wish me luck! 🙂

As for the rest of the week, nothing too exciting. I went to the mall to get the prizes for completing the lululemon 40|80 Strava Challenge. I got the Swiftly Tech Short Sleeve and Speed Shorts in black. Pretty awesome prizes!I’ll leave you with more pics from my trail run on Thursday at Forest Park, Portland’s 5,000+-acre wooded area with trails for hiking, biking & bird-watching, which includes a 30-mile route.I actually turned around at this point since the tree was blocking the path and it was so muddy. I attempted to go over the tree but didn’t want to fall in the mud. It looks like you can just hop right over but looks can be deceiving.
I want to go back when it’s not so muddy.

Have you gone trail running? How’d your week go? Any races coming up?

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