Welcome to week 12 of our Marathon Training Blog series! Click here to read week 1!

Week 12:

Monday: Rest–love it.

Tuesday: 5 miles in 55m, 28s with an average of 11:06 min/mile. I ran in the evening at the gym… two of my least favorite things. And 5 miles!  We’ve upped the distance in our weekday training!  Tuesday was a particularly bad day at work for me so I need a victory that night. Gilmore Girls on Netflix made the time pass nicely :).

Wednesday: Crosstrain. Squats, lunges, sit-ups, planks, repeat… I just try to get them in as the day goes on… 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there.

Thursday: 5 miles FAIL. Brian was sick and I was too big of a chicken to go run by myself early in the morning. I vowed to run that night, but absolutely could not run and get groceries (something I HAD to do–no food in the house!) after the crazy workday I had. Not an excuse, I know.

Friday: CT or Rest. Rest.

Long Run Saturday–10 miles. We ran it in 2:01:57 with an average of 12:12 min/mile. This 10 miler was a wake-up call for me. I struggled mentally from mile 1. My hips hurt, I struggled for air, and I just wasn’t into it at all. I remember saying, “today, the impossible doesn’t seem so possible, bud” to my husband around mile 8… I desperately needed a pick-me-up. My sweet husband encouraged me and we trudged along. In the last mile, we saw a sweet lady sitting in a chair on the side of the road. Our town was having a parade later that morning and she had her seat all picked out. We waved as we approached and she waved back. After we passed she shouted, “THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I turned and looked and saw she was looking at us and waving :). I have no idea what in the world she was thanking us for, but it gave me a good chuckle and ended our run on a sweet note.

Sunday: 3 mi EZ. I’m done caring about this one :).

So, the final assessment of week 12:

85%, B.  I think I was pretty generous with my grading this week. On one of our Marathon groups on facebook, someone posting recently about suffering burn out. I totally relate. If this were a half marathon I would have already raced and be sporting a new medal by now… but, we still have weeks of training to go!

The positive is this. The weeks have FLOWN by. I counted today and including the current week we are in (Week 13), there are just 7 training weeks left until race week. That’s both exciting and terrifying. The marathon is less than two months away and we’re beginning to finalize all of our plans and schedules. I’m thinking about how I want to share that experience with all of you. If you’re interested in photos or live videos or anything like that, please comment and let me know! If I do, they will be on my social media platforms.

Week 13 coming up next! (WE RUN 16 THIS SATURDAY!)