Welcome to week 5 of our Marathon Training Blog series! Click here to read week 1!

Week 5:

Monday: REST!-Check.Tuesday: 4 miles in 43m, 54s with an average of 10:59 min/mi. We’re now up to 4 miles on our weekday runs. This means waking up at 4:45 to run instead of 5:00. It means running at the gym a lot because it’s hot and I don’t want to overheat running faster than we do on Saturdays during long runs. I felt pretty good about this one.Wednesday: Crosstrain. Fail. I’ll admit there were great intentions. But it was 4th of July. We slept in because we didn’t have work. then we wanted to get to the Farmer’s Market when they opened and before we knew it, the day was nearly over. It was also 95+ degrees and 100% humidity that day. I was ROASTING. It’s not an excuse. And I PAID for the lack of crosstrain by Saturday, but we’ll get to that in a minute.Thursday: 4 miles in 44m, 49s with an average of 11:12 min/mi. We ran outside. It was hot. I’m starting to sound like a broken record.Friday: CT or Rest. We chose rest… and I paid the price. Keep reading.Long Run Saturday–6 miles in 1:07:14 with an average pace of 11:12 min/mi. Weather was BLISSFUL. I mean, could not have been nicer. We had a rare treat. 65 degrees and low humidity. We were so happy! However, about a mile in I felt a pinch in my right knee. It was worse going up or down hills and would get a bit better. When I increased speed it would hurt more so I had to back off at the end of the run and finish a good 20 seconds behind my buds. This has happened before almost always after I’ve neglected to work my quads enough during cross training. If I ignore it and don’t take care of it, going down steps will become virtually impossible. So, since Saturday, I’ve done squats or lunges every chance I’ve gotten and it feels better so far. I decided skipping cross train can’t be an option. Even if it’s only 20 minutes and it’s just stuff I can do in the house, that’s what I will do.Sunday: 3 mi EZ. We ran 3.02 miles in 47m and 25s with an average of 15:42 min/mi. We ran 1.5 of it and walked the rest. We decided to go to the lake near our house and it was just beautiful with blue skies and sunshine.