T minus 26 days!

OMG! It's Christmas eve, which means that we have less than 4 weeks until race day (26 days to be exact)!!

I occasionally like to look back through my old posts to gain perspective on how far I've come, and I am definitely feeling more hopeful and excited than I was during last year's training season .  Mainly I can attribute this to the fact that my body is handling the pressure better, and I'm being much smarter about listening to aches and pains and knowing the difference between fatigue and exhaustion.

We are pushing through on our training schedule through the holidays, which is no easy feat! Schedules are packed, and we are re-scheduling weekly to fit it all in.  As a result, we are losing a little bit of our Wednesday night strength training (arms mostly, and extra heavy squats on Mondays), but at this point it is about keeping things strong as they are, and keeping everything happy. :)  When the race is over, we can go back to a bigger emphasis on building muscle just in time to get ready for summer.

We lost mileage last week, so we are making sure this week is full, despite the fact that Christmas is smack in the middle, and Sunday's long run is being moved to Saturday. Since it wasn't possible to get all the runs in and keep a designated rest day before the first one, we took our normal leg night and shifted it to keep the emphasis off the legs:

Sunday: Cross training, mixed cardio (treadmill, elliptical, stationary bike), 60 minutes
Monday: Cross training (stair climber and elliptical) and abs, 90 minutes
Tuesday: 7 mile run, downtown
Wednesday: OFF! (Merry Christmas!)
Thursday: 5 mile run, on the track, with final mile composed of sprints
Friday: OFF!
Saturday: 9 mile run, Papago Park (testing the hills for the race)


I am super excited and proud of where we are up until this point. The fact that we had extra weeks in the 8-9 mile range made me feel a little better that we lost some mileage this week due to exhaustion and sickness.  But if we learned nothing over the past few years, we learned that we need to listen to our bodies when they scream for rest.  Losing 2 miles here and there is not going to hurt us in the end.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!