Week 3: Matrimony over miles

Shifting focus to family and fun

Can dancing count towards weekly mileage? Asking for me. 💃🏻

This week started in San Francisco and ended in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, where I saw my beloved sister, Lily, marry the love of her life, Nick. The wedding was held at my parents’ house, and it was an all-around incredible affair — we gained memories for a lifetime. While I ran this week, it simply wasn’t the priority.

Below I recap how I make choices about my training, particularly as it relates to travel. Per usual, I’ll end with a few odds n’ ends. But first, how stunning was my sister?

The dress was everythinggg 😍

📋 Total miles: 25.7 miles

• Monday: 4.8 miles (recovery)

• Tuesday: 6.0 miles (2 mile warmup, 10 x 1 min fast, 1 min recovery, cool down)

• Wednesday: 5.3 (easy)

• Thursday: 5.4 miles (20 min easy, 25 min progressive tempo)

• Friday: Rest

• Saturday: Rest

• Sunday: 4.2 miles (easy)

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It’s not exactly a high-tech system, but it works…

🗓 Planning and priorities

Before I start a training cycle, I print out my plan and mark it up with all my known events from now until race day. With events on the calendar, I then X out and swap days to make the schedule work for my real life. Why do I do this for all 16 weeks? For one, I like making up-front decisions to lower my cognitive load later on (think tech execs wearing the same outfit everyday to stave off decision fatigue). I also can let people know super far in advance of runs where I know I’ll need help. I gave a friend ample notice that I’ll need company on a 3-hour long run in San Diego in October — that’s something I don’t like to spring on people.

But plans have their limits. This week I wanted to swap my Friday rest with Saturday. Truthfully, this was all planned around my hair — once it was styled late Friday, I knew needing to shower would be a pain. But on Friday morning I woke up and I just didn’t feel like running. It was now or never, and I scrapped it.

Past me might have been eager to make up for lost mileage, but current me isn’t going to sweat not sweating. Next week’s schedule is lighter. This is because my training program is split into 4, 4-week periods where the first 3 weeks build and the fourth steps back for recovery. I will hold the lighter training with the exception of tomorrow, when I will do today’s missed long run. Long runs are the most important runs during marathon training, and I didn’t think partying into the wee hours of the morning set me up for Sunday long run success.

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🧳 Odds n’ ends

Reading about: The NYT published an article about the role of super shoes in training (as opposed to their widely discussed benefits in racing). The TL;DR is that some people love to train in them, and others love to leave them for game day. I own two pairs of super shoes — the Nike Air Zoom Alphafly NEXT% and the New Balance FuelCell SuperComp Elite v3 (intense names, right?) — and wore the latter in two workouts over the last two weeks. Like the NYT, I am undecided as to whether they’re worth wearing during workouts.

Snacking on: Pie! Instead of wedding cake, we had wedding pie — and there’s lots of yummy extras.

Someone has to eat the leftovers, and I volunteer as tribute.

Inspired by: My family’s collective effort to make the most glorious celebration happen for Lily and Nick. Teams aren’t just in sports…

With that, we close out Week 3. As always, thanks to everyone who engaged with or shared last week’s post. I’m loving every new addition to list — particular those of you who sent this to your parents/in-laws (it’s more than one of you, and I’m into it).

Lastly, I’d be honored if you joined my virtual team by donating $26 ($1/mile) to my CSforAll fundraiser.

See you next week!