Skyline To The Sea Marathon Training Recap: Week 11

The mileage is starting to get serious.

This is the point in training when I usually face the marathon abyss – when the mileage is enough to be daunting, but I also know it’s going to get worse before it gets any better.

The combination of race weekends and (mostly) meeting my goal of doing new routes has resulted in my avoiding the worst of it.

Fingers crossed it stays that way.

Read prior week training posts.

Skyline To The Sea Marathon Training Goals

The weeks are flying by. I’ve been doing moderately well meeting my goals. Each week in training I want to:

• Run 1 new route
• Run (at least) 1 route with significant elevation gain
• Do 2-3 strength & general fitness workouts
• One yoga session
• Do 2-3 foam rolling sessions

The Plan v. Reality: Week 11

Area of focus

Hydration

Monday

15-minute Aaptiv workout ‘Aches No More.’ Not bad, but kind of unremarkable.

I’m going to stop doing the running and cardio Aaptiv workouts. About a third of the workouts in the Aaptiv/Self Magazine program I’m doing are running or interval workouts and I’m not getting anything from them.

I’ll rearrange the days a bit and still do the remaining stretching, yoga, and strength workouts, but not so much with the running ones.

I tried a new thing, it wasn’t for me. Moving on…

Tuesday

I’m a little confused by the command my gu packet gave me this morning. ‘Grab this instead ‘ instead of what? A banana? A tuba? What? #seenonmyrun

A post shared by Sara Kurth (@puffincoaching) on Aug 15, 2017 at 1:29pm PDT

My distance for the day should be listed as 5 miles…eventually.

I had to fight hard to start this run.

Once I got going, it was all good, but I had zero desire in heading out the door.

My procrastination did result in me doing the dishes and a few other little chores around the house that needed doing, so it wasn’t a total loss, and I did eventually get my ass out the door, but this was a tough one to start.

The struggle is real people.

Wednesday

My mid-run photo game felt totally uninspired today. Generic fountain selfie it is. #seenonmyrun

A post shared by Sara Kurth (@puffincoaching) on Aug 16, 2017 at 3:39pm PDT

I really can’t come up with anything to say about this morning’s run. I felt good just being out and doing my thing.

Also did the 7-minute Aaptiv Workout ‘Plank Plus.’ Shockingly boring workout. Hold plank for a minute, do squats for a minute, repeat several times. Really?

Thursday

I’m calling it after only 2 weeks- the finishers bracelet from the Empower 10k is my favorite, most worn, and most used bit of race swag ever. #empowertribe

A post shared by Sara Kurth (@puffincoaching) on Aug 17, 2017 at 12:10pm PDT

Another 5 miles that felt really good. Yeah!

I did decide mid-run that I need to come up with a better 5-mile route.

This is the distance that really started feeling rutty in the last marathon cycle. I’ll have to break out the maps and try something new.

Friday

Today is a rest day before my long run tomorrow.

I did the 9-minute Aaptiv workout ‘Calm Before The Cardio.’ Odd little workout. Some dynamic stretches, some static stretches, some core work.

In trying to do everything, it didn’t really do anything very well. 9 minutes is a short workout under any circumstances, but a 9-minute workout that tries to be everything? Not great.

À propos of nothing, I’m including my race photo from Bear Creek last week that I posted to Instagram today as a #flashbackfriday post.

It’s that rare and illusive thing -a good race photo! My eyes are open and everything! #bearcreek #fbf

A post shared by Sara Kurth (@puffincoaching) on Aug 18, 2017 at 11:09am PDT

It’s not relevant to anything happening this week, I’m just so happy that I finally got a good race photo (my eyes are closed in probably 90% of my race photos) that I’m not going to let the opportunity go to waste!

Saturday

Today was a rare non-race Saturday in August, so I decided to head to my favorite trail marathon long run route. Perfect combo of crazy hills and recovery flats. #seenonthetrail

A post shared by Sara Kurth (@puffincoaching) on Aug 19, 2017 at 4:04pm PDT

It’s not a race day! How novel. I went back out to my favorite stomping grounds for training runs for trail marathons. The Briones to Mt. Diablo Trail is partially crazy trails and partially paved flat trails, so it ticks all the boxes for what I want in a long run and at just about 12 miles long (one-way), so it’s also long enough for the longest long runs.

While about half the course is on paved trails, the hills are no joke – climbing just over 2000 ft in the course of 18 miles.

I felt pretty good in this run, although the very steepest trail bit was at the very end of the run (literally – 17.80 miles according to my Garmin). It took everything I had to keep moving forward (and up) in those last .2 miles.

Sunday

Another Aaptiv yoga workout. This one was the Intermediate Vinyasa ‘Flow So Short And Sweaty.’ Once again, I did mostly OK, but occasionally found myself staring at my phone confused trying to conceptualize what the heck the coach was describing.

Why I stared at my phone looking for clarification in an audio-only app, I don’t know.

Week Summary

I think I’ll make this week the last of my Aaptiv workouts. The Aaptiv/ Self Magazine challenge is a 28-day challenge, and I had already decided to not do any of the remaining cardio/running workouts. That doesn’t leave many workouts, so the end of the week feels like a good time to end the experiment with this little app.

Overall, I think Aaptiv is a good idea that never quite makes it in execution.

However, I am very intrigued by the fact that while I can’t say anything good about the app, I kept doing the workouts.

Why did I stick with it, when I so universally didn’t like the app!?

Next Week: Week 12

Plan

Area of Focus

Stretching and Foam Rolling.