How Do You Manage Your Marathon Training?

Last week was the first time I have felt like running has taken over parts of my life. I know I made this whole marathon commitment but things like housework, sleeping, and spending time with our friends are being pushed aside. Typically, we clean our house well about once a week and I'm in charge of the upstairs. I get home from work on Friday and get it all done at once. For the past two Fridays I've either half assed it or totally disregarded it completely. Every night I say that I'm going to bed around ten and every night it is rolling closer to 11-11:30pm. Our weekends usually consist of us hanging with our friends at least once, but lately I've felt too beat up and tired to do anything but watch TV and ice. I've got to get better about it all because if I don't make more of an effort now, it is going to get a lot worse. Every time I miss one of those things and some others, I feel really shitty. I really need to manage my time and sleep better.

Training was tough this week because I was a day off. I normally do my long runs on Saturday and than don't run again until Tuesday. Well, because we were in the ER last Saturday morning, my run got pushed to Sunday and man, I felt it on Tuesday. My leg was really bothering me, so I ran slower (if that is possible) and finally walked the last mile and a half. I did the three miles in 48:30, probably my slowest since I have started training. 

Thursday was better, I did all four miles in 56:43 and felt pretty good. I listen to Sonzga again and this time picked "Rap Anthems". My last mile was powered by House of Pain, Jay-Z, Wreckx n Effect and Biggie.

Saturday was my twelve miler at the dreaded Umstead Park. I expected to feel awful and be awful, but surprisingly, I think I did pretty good. It was pretty humid but I ran pretty well. I did struggle on those stupid hills, but my time was 2:51:59, my goal was 2:50, but I'm still happy with it. 

I applied to be a BibRave Pro ambassador and I'm not sure if I got accepted, but I got a pretty sweet Addaday roller in the mail, from assuming BibRave. I have tried it out a few times and it has helped my leg loosen up. The little red part, was super painful, but effective.

Today I woke up and decided to make food. I'm not a cook and Matt literally does all our cooking. I decided to make energy balls from a Pinterest recipe because I wanted to start eating better. So, instead of eating straight up M&M's and mini chocolate chips, I added oats and shit. I also decided to to make Rice a Roni and spinach for lunch, with Matt's supervision. The energy balls almost stopped before it even started because it called for grinding the ingredients.....and I had no idea what that meant. So, I had to wait for Matt to wake up and pull out our food processor. 

The dogs were pretty concerned while I was "cooking" so they were pretty much in the way the entire time. 

This week I'm planning on staying on track, eating well, doing two strength training sessions, three foam rollings, and attempting to go bed at a decent time. Since I was feeling a little blah about training this week but after watching a video by The Ginger Runner from the 2014 NYC Marathon, it totally motivated me!