LiveSTRONG Seattle Marathon training week 23 - a change in plans

I hope that you all had a great Mother's Day!  We had a good time - I caught up with my mom and grandma on the phone, and we spent time with Christine's family celebrating Mother's Day, and birthdays from May, April and even February.


It was a so-so training week: Christine and I were both beset by a fatigue bug during the middle of the week, which made keeping things on track a serious challenge.  But I did manage to get in three workouts:

• Cycling: 20.71 miles in 1:10:09.
• Running: 3.05 miles in 26:47.
• Weight: up a smidge to 194.4.

Even though the run was supposed to be be 4 miles, I had to cut it short because of the fatigue.  But I learned something very important.  Running with 45 ounces of water with this style Camelbak is great for long runs, even though I run out of water around 15-18 miles:

But I've been considering running with my larger 70 ounce backpack-style Camelbak which I use for cycling:

Well, even 3 miles puts so much of a workout on my core muscles and wears me out that it's pretty clear the extra hydration is not worth it for running.  For now, I'll stick to having to refill for those 18+ mile runs.

On a related topic, the long run... my training schedule had me running a long runs on May 8th, May 22nd and June 5th leading up to the race on June 26th.  Planned 20, 22 and 24 miles.  However, May 8th was opening day of the Beaverton Farmer's Market.  I could have pushed my long run to Monday the 10th (obviously May 9th being Mother's Day, that was off-limits!).  But on top of that, May 22nd there's a family event planned and May 23rd is Hannah's birthday, so I would have had to push another long run to a Monday morning or pull it in to a Friday.  Based on all of that, I changed the lead up schedule to the marathon:

• May 15: 20 miles
• June 5: 23 miles
• June 26: 26.2 miles!

Hopefully this training schedule will work ok.  On the good side, I'll be able to battle through the fatigue that showed up last week and prevent further wear-down.  However, even though long runs on a three week cycle usually go pretty fast, they tend to feel a little crummy at the start and the finish.  We'll have to see how that turns out.

In related marathon news, LIVESTRONG changed my Team LIVESTRONG link.  However, more donations have been rolling in and we're now up to $945.  Only $55 away from the $1000 goal - thanks everyone!  Let's keep it up and push past that target - maybe hit $1,500 by race time?

I hope you all have a great week, and that you mothers get the same respect each day that you got yesterday. :)  Until next time, onward...