Marathon Redemption - Week 6

I lie here paralytic, inside this soul.
Screaming for you til my throat is numb.
I wanna break out, I need a way out.
I don't believe that it's gotta be this way.
The worst is the waiting,
in this womb I'm suffocating.
Feel your presence, filling up my lungs with oxygen.
I breathe you in.
I die.

Rebirthing now;
wanna live for love, wanna live for you and me.
Breathe for the first time now,
I come to life somehow.

Skillet, "Rebirthing"

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! And now, a Valentine's Day poem:

Roses are red,
Violets are pretty,
I'm gonna own this marathon in Oklahoma City.

I knew that at some point all the weeks of craziness, the cross-training, the calorie counting, the new training plan and the committment to speed work were going to pay off sometime, or at least I HOPED it was going to pay off sometime, and was I ever right. Week 6 was a fantastic running week for me. I may be getting ahead of myself, seeing as I've got 10 weeks left to go in this plan, but if the rest of marathon training can go this well I have no doubt that marathon #2 in Oklahoma City will provide redemption in a big way.

Earlier in the week, I thought the highlight of this post was going to be how well my mile repeats went this week. I used to LOATHE speed work of any variety. I will now say something I thought I'd never say: I love mile repeats. Mile repeats are my FAVORITE. Largely because my splits this week looked like this:

Mile 1 - 8:21 (yeah, not even close to fast for some, but for me - holy cow!)
Mile 2 - 8:22 (where is this coming from?!)
Mile 3 - 8:12 (%$*%^@%$#@!)

I've never run that fast in my life - in the past, maybe I could put up that time for one mile, but the miles after that sure wouldn't have come anywhere close. But not only did I keep it up for all 3 repeats, I managed to make the last my fastest! Major accomplishment for this speed work hater.

I was feeling so good this week, I threw in an extra 2 mile run on Friday just for the heck of it...I figured it would be a good warm-up for Saturday's 18 mile run. And that was a good strategy, because Saturday's 18 mile run was probably one of the best long runs of my life. Not only was it a beautiful day, with no wind, my legs held up really well to those 18 miles and I made it through the entire run without a single walk break. Again, not much of an accomplishment to a lot of people, but for me, this is huge - I don't think I had a single training run over 16 miles before my last marathon where I didn't stop and walk at least a few times. And I'm thrilled today that other than a little soreness in my hips, I seem to have recovered from the run rather well.

Those 18 miles are a huge confidence boost for my 20 mile run next weekend...I'm sort of looking forward to the challenge now, rather than dreading it entirely. I'm hoping that I get another nice weather day - my birthday is the 18th, so another non-windy day for my first 20 mile run of this training plan would be a fantastic birthday present.

Week 6 runs:

Run 1 - 2 miles easy
Run 2 - 6 miles total; 3x1600 repeats at 8:21, 8:22, 8:12
Run 3 - 2 miles easy
Run 4 - 18 miles long

Week 7 is 2 miles easy, a 6 mile tempo run, and then a big 20 miles in celebration of my birthday!