Welcome to week 7 of our Marathon Training Blog series! Click here to read week 1!

Week 7:

Monday: REST!-Check.

Tuesday: 4 miles in 42m, 7s with an average of 10:32 min/mi. We ran at the gym. I listened to Casefiles Podcast and it made the time FLY BY. I think this may be my new gym running pass time.

Wednesday: Crosstrain. I’m hitting the squats, lunges, and crunches HARD on my off days. It’s hard to dedicate 45 straight minutes to the workout, but I’m finding 20 minutes here and there and it’s working well for me! Quads and abs are my main focus because I feel a HUGE difference on the weeks I neglect them when I’m on my long runs.

Thursday: 1 mile in 11m, 16s with an average of 11:16 min/mi. We ran outside and it was perfect weather. My run started off wonderfully and I was so excited to be outside and for the temps to be cooler. I was really enjoying this run… which is probably why I took my focus off the crazy cracked sidewalk we were running on. My right toe caught on a jacked piece of concrete and I went flying. This was, by far, my worst fall. I landed hard on my left hip and then on my left shoulder, skinning my palms somewhere in there. My shoulder was jammed pretty hard and I was scared something was broken. My hip hurt, but I could walk so I figured no serious damage was done there. I cried. I begged my husband to finish without me, but he laughed and said he was walking me home. He’s a pretty awesome guy. We slowly made our way back to the house and I carefully pulled off the layers of workout gear to assess the damage. Bloody skinned hands were easy to clean up. My shoulder, while incredibly painful, was still completely mobile so I just iced it. My hip just had a giant knot on it, but no bruise forming (just yet :).

Friday: CT or Rest. Again, we rested. Seriously, how boring are these marathon training blogs.

Long Run Saturday–10 miles in 2:04:44 with an average of 12:29 min/mi. My shoulder was killing me and my hip had started to form a lovely bruise. I didn’t know how Saturday was going to happen so we started out very slow. We did the 2:1 ratio again and both really enjoyed that. We ate apple/banana apple sauces at miles 4 and 8 and they worked well for us. They are about 70 calories each and we keep them in the fridge so they don’t get too warm while running. I may incorporate some raw honey in our long runs in the coming weeks, but this was a good fuel for 10 miles. The only pain I had during the run was my bruise on my hip. It got worse the longer we ran, but would ease up on the walks so that made it much more manageable.

Sunday: 3 mi EZ. We bailed again on this one. Instead we took a 2 hour nap and I don’t regret it at all. Sometimes your body screams at you to rest when you have been doing nothing but running around like a crazy person. That was Sunday. We were ZONKED. It was the best nap of my entire life.

So, the final assessment of week 7:

90%, A-.  I went easier on myself this week because of the fall. These weeks will happen. The fall was out of my control and I did what was best for my body by not finishing the run and resting where I needed it. I didn’t knock of points for Thursday because I still ran strong for that 1 mile and walked a mile home.

I can’t believe we’ve finished 7 weeks already! Every week I’m feeling stronger and more and more like finishing a marathon is actually possible. Don’t ask me that question in a few weeks when we have to run 20 miles :).

Week 8, here we come!