You must be swift as the coursing river (as long as it's the Lazy River) - comments welcome

[avondale]

Sorry to hear you were sick this week! Hopefully you are over it now. One week of lighter activity won't derail your training.

 

[LSUlakes]

I went to bed feeling perfectly normal and woke up with a stomach bug. I spent most of the day sleeping when not communing with my toilet.

My buddy had the same thing last week. Must be something going around on a large scale. Typically stomach bugs are more of a local / reginal level. It was 2-3 days for him. Hope your back to 100% soon and good luck with the rest of your training for the MCM!!

 

[WillRunForPizza]

August 18 - 24, 2025
Marathon training week 7 | 63 days until Marine Corps Marathon
In which I never really liked those quads anyway

Monday
off

Since I didn't do any exercise, I have no notes and therefore no idea what happened.

Tuesday
Easy/hill strides: 6.3 miles (9:51), avg. HR 150, max 181, 90% Z1-2, T+D~130
Upper body strength

Not a bad run. The temperature cooled off quite a bit Monday evening, so it was a lot more pleasant than last week. I was feeling a little tired still but pretty much normal.

Wednesday
Workout: 6 x 5 min M/3 min T/1 min CV/2 min + 6 x 30s hard/90s
12 miles, avg. HR 165, max 186, T+D~140
Lower body strength




I decided to move things around a bit and do some progression intervals instead of my planned workout. I wanted to feel a little more prepared going into a time trial. This one seemed like a similar amount of work without any particular performance pressure.

Because I moved the workout from week 10 to week 7, I figured I could just do 5 reps if necessary. But when I finished rep 5, I felt like 6 would be tough but doable. I decided it was a good time for a little supercompensation, so I went for it. And it was fine.

Looking back at the lap splits, the M efforts are pretty consistent, T is a little less consistent but okay, and then CV is all over the place. I think this last might just be measurement error; I'm pretty sure I was at least faster than the T portions.

Thursday
Recovery: 6.4 miles (10:28), avg. HR 141, max 154, 100% Z1-2, T+D~125

My legs were tired. Go figure. The weather was pretty decent, though.

Friday
Easy/strides: 6.8 miles (9:36), avg. HR 155, max 186, 75% Z1-2, T+D~135
Core

I was pokey getting out and then ran a little too hard once I got there. Also I did the strides kind of in the middle of the run, which did not help with keeping my HR down.

Saturday
No downhill left behind: 12.1 miles (9:56), avg. HR 159, max 180, T+D~130-135
PT exercises

No Downhill Left Behind is like No Uphill Left Behind but backwards. You would think that would make it more fun, but it mostly just makes it harder. Running uphill is kind of hard no matter what pace you're going, and then you're also working on the downhills, so it's basically all kind of hard.

Why do it if it's so much harder? I think one reason my legs got tired so early at MCM last year was because of the early downhills. In theory, it only takes a few hard downhill workouts to build up resilience in your muscles, so that's what I'm trying to do here. I plan to do a couple more of these before the race. They have to be in weeks where I don't have a long run workout, though, because that would definitely be too much "hard" for one week.

Anyway, I ended up with an average pace of about 10 min/mile, but the spread was ridiculous. I was going about 6-7 min/mile on the downhills and 12-13 on the uphills. It didn't help that I started out not feeling great - even those 12-13 min miles were pushing over the edge of Z2 at times. I was thinking I might do some hill strides at the end, but my legs were dead.


See what I mean?

I did manage to struggle through my PT exercises later, but I did a little less than usual and mostly bodyweight.

Sunday
Long: 18.1 miles (10:04), avg. HR 152, max 161, 98% Z1-2, T+D~135-140

I actually think that went pretty well considering I trashed my legs on Saturday. Did it feel good? No. I definitely struggled the last few miles in particular. But I did it, and it even stayed mostly easy (at least aerobically) except for a couple of hills.

This run brought to you by lots of carbs (261g) and a couple of stops to refill my soft flasks.

Totals
Running: 10h 3m, 61.9 miles
Strength/mobility: 1h 42m
Total: 11h 45m


I think this is my highest-mileage week yet? (Not counting the week I ran Monday to Sunday because of a tune-up race.) I ran 30 miles in the last two days. It's good that the weather was cooler or I would not have made it.

Coming up


I have a lighter mid-week workout (hills are never easy, but we're talking like 15 minutes of hard work here) and then a monster long run workout. I am not actually sure this is possible - I might end up shortening the last rep out of necessity. But we'll see how it goes. At least the weather should still be pretty good!