With only 49 days (49! Days!) to go until Marine Corps Marathon, I find myself fading from the training a bit. Of course, I’m blaming it on the heat, as September has thus far been warmer than August, but I think part of it is ‘seeing’ the finish line ahead and knowing that I am in the final stretch. And since I have basically been training long distances (beyond 13 miles) since February, I guess I am a bit tired and anxious to put myself to the test in a full marathon.

I also experienced a shooting pain in my right knee on Wednesday, after my run. It hurt when I was going up and down stairs, putting weight on the knee. I decided to take an extra rest day this week to just give my body some time to heal up so I can continue making my push for 10/25/15.

So that explains a less than stellar week of training. Here you are:

Sunday: cross training. This mostly consisted of me laying out by the pool. Oh, and five aqua-jogging laps around it, which took me about 20 min total. Not the most inspired cross training effort, but it was something different for my body.

Monday: 4 mi at 6.1 mph. A bit of a recovery run. I felt really good after this.

Tuesday: Rest day (planned)

Wednesday: 8 mi, 6.5mph pace. Was meant to be at race pace (est 6.6-6.7 mph), but I was fading around the 3.5 mi mark. So I dropped my pace back to 6.5 mph to ensure that I could complete the miles.

Thursday: Rest day (unplanned)

This little guy was still pipping, or coming out of his shell. He was taken to the Dept of Environment office where they will hold him a few days until his yolk sac absorbed all the way, at which point, he will be released into the ocean.

Friday: Rest day (planned). I volunteered with the sea turtle nest monitoring, and ended up walking a total of 3.75 miles through the sand during my 6-hour shift. So maybe I should count this as a cross training day??

Saturday: 18 miles. I was surprisingly strong on this run, doing 7.5 on the treadmill at 6.3 mph pace, and then completing the outdoor portion (10.5 mi) of the run in 1 hr 50 min. Considering it was 102 degrees real feel at the start of the run (and 97 real feel when I finished), this was great, especially as any mile where I ran the whole mile was right around a 10 min/mi pace (there were three miles where I walked a portion of it, and clearly had a slower mile). Completed the evening with an ice bath and an ice cold beer.

TOTAL MILES FOR THE WEEK: 40 miles