Weekly Recap: 11 Weeks Until the Boston Marathon

Hello! I missed my weekly recap last week; my mom had surgery and had some complications afterwards, so it was a stressful week. Fortunately, she is stable (thank goodness), though she’ll be in the hospital for awhile. I shared a bit more on a post earlier this week, the February Ultimate Coffee Date with Deb and Coco. Please get vaccinated. And thank you to all the wonderful health care workers who have helped her during this time.

With that said, here’s a quick rundown of last week and this week in training for the 2022 Boston Marathon.

**There might have been a little confusion on the Ultimate Coffee Date post– I did already run the Boston Marathon in 2017, read that recap HERE. I’m running it again, but had received questions as to when I qualified this time, which is why I shared those details. If you were reading this blog back in 2017, you couldn’t have missed that I ran it as I wrote about it A LOT, ha!

12 Weeks Until the Boston Marathon:

Monday: 6 treadmill miles, 8:50 min/mile. Followed the run with 10 min core + 10 min upper body
Tuesday: 5 miles on the treadmill, 9 min/mile. After work, I did 10 min core and 40 min of upper body on the Peloton app.
Wednesday: 4 morning treadmill miles, 8:30 min/mile, and then 4 evening miles with Dustin and Ruth, 8:45 min/mile. My first run outside since Baton Rouge! That goodness for the treadmill, though. Wasn’t a safe week to run outside. 8 miles on the day.
Thursday: 6 post-work miles with my friend Vicki, 9:55 min/mile. Nice and easy with questionable footing. 10 min core afterwards.
Friday: 6 treadmill easy miles, 9:25 min/mile, 20 min core afterwards on Peloton
Saturday: 13.15 miles, 8:55 min/mile average, 10 min core after
Sunday: 4 miles with Dustin and Ruth, 8:35 min/mile average, 15 min core on Peloton. We followed up the run with an afternoon snowboarding at Afton Alps, one of the Twin Cities area ski “hills” (definitely not a mountain!)

We have a snowboarding trip out west coming up with some friends, so I just needed to get out to ensure I remembered how to board! Mission accomplished.

We used to take a trip to the mountains once a year- lots of visits to Big Sky, Utah, Colorado, etc. but I hadn’t been snowboarding since before I broke my leg running (not snowboarding) in 2018. Fortunately, I didn’t forget entirely how to do it, though I need to build back some confidence.

Summary: 48 miles of running, a variety of strength and core every day. I’m dedicated to doing at least 10 minute of core EVERY day since Jan 1 and its been going well.

11 Weeks Until the Boston Marathon:

Monday: 7 morning miles with my friends Christie and Julie, 9 min/mile average, with some strides in there. Followed the run with 10 min core and then some post-work upper body strength training on the Peloton app.

Tuesday: Workouts are back! 3 miles easy, 6x(4 min at marathon effort, 2 min faster, 2 min recovery), cool-down to 10 miles, 9:20 min/mile average. The last few intervals and the cool-down were around Bde Maka Ska and the wind was INTENSE. The temperature was in the 20’s, but brrr was the wind crazy (gusts across the lake up to 30 mph). It felt like Baton Rouge all over again!

It was a busy day at the (home) office, but I squeezed in some strength after work- 30 min lower body with Jess Sims, 20 min core with Robin, and a bonus 10 min barre with Hannah on the Peloton app for an hour total.

Wednesday: You know I’m happy to run on my wonderful treadmill, but I wanted to connect with my friends too to catch up on some things. So we layered up and headed out into the -2 feels like -16 temps for 7 miles easy, 9:30 min/mile average. I doubled-up on tights and my legs felt heavy and tight- I much prefer one pair of warm tights than two!

Twin Cities in Motion (the organizers of the Twin Cities Marathon) are doing a challenge on Instagram to show your frozen face (hashtag #tcmfrozenfacechallenge) to win a free pair of shoes. Check it out, there are some really impressive ones, better than mine!

Thursday: My friends and I had tentative plans to meet to run, but a real temperature of -10 and a much colder “feels like” with the wind meant we all chickened out. Treadmill day for me!

I had asked my coach if I could do two workouts during the week with less frequent workouts in the long run; she was open to this idea, so that’s what I had this week.

Shorter intervals on Tuesday, and then more sustained time at marathon effort on Thursday, which was 2 miles easy, 6 miles at marathon effort with short breaks (2 minutes, though since I was on the treadmill, I just used a few of those breaks to get water), and then cool-down to 10 miles total, 8:45 min/mile.

I did this after work and my stomach was not great- I don’t think my body is used to running after work. I run better in the morning on an empty stomach.

I followed up with run with two 10-minute core classes on Peloton.

Friday: Rest day from running! I stuck with my 10 minutes of core of every day and also did 20 minutes of upper body (and dog walks, as always. No matter how cold, the dogs still need walks!)

Saturday: Long run day! I had 15 miles on my schedule, all easy miles. The temperature was 3 degrees with a “feels like” of -13 and wow, that wind was harsh. Yikes. This was a struggle with the wind, the temps, and the footing.

The Right Fit: Lululemon Down for it All Jacket (the navy I’m wearing is currently marked down!), Athleta Altitude Polartec tights, Oiselle hat & PNW gaitor, Craft mittens, Tracksmith Brighton Base Layer, Kahtoola nanospikes.

Not pictured, my Nathan Sports fuel belt which was useless as my nuun frozen within the first 15 minutes. Sad. No hydration, unfortunately.

Sunday: I met up with Christie for 7 snowy miles together, 9 min/mile average. We got a thin dusting of snow overnight which made things a little tricky, but at least the temperature was in the teens.

We caught some of the skijoring racing on Lake of the Isles that is part of the Loppet events (i.e. cross country skiing with dogs pulling you.) A lot of German Short Haired Pointers in the lead! Those are very athletic dogs.

I plan to get in some lower body and core on the Peloton app shortly.

Tonight, Dustin and I are taking a virtual cooking class with Elyse Kopecky (of the Shalane cookbook fame!) We did a ton of prep work yesterday, as the class covers several dishes and I wanted to make sure we could actually pay attention to her vs. scrambling to keep up, ha! Read more about the class HERE.

Summary: 56 miles of running, daily core and a mix of Peloton strength.

And that wraps up the past two weeks of training for the Boston marathon 2022.

Speaking of the Boston marathon, I did purchase the Adidas Celebration Jacket for the race for 2022; what do you think of the colors?

“This year’s blue, purple and green edition was designed to commemorate 50 years since eight women became the first ever to run a marathon in 1972.” <– pretty neat!

I really like the traditional colors (like Dustin received for 2021) and I loved the red/white/blue from the pandemic/virtual year (2020). But I’ll still wear the blue, purple, and green (only AFTER the race though, or it’s bad luck!)

Here is the 2017 jacket, the other time I ran Boston:

Did you know that the London Marathon marathon jacket mirrors the Boston Celebration Jacket? Here is my jacket from London 2016, which is the same as the Boston jacket for that year.

The NYC marathon jackets are a similar vibe as the Celebration jackets, where people recognize them by the year of the race. Here’s mine from 2017 (which was my 6th and final world major, hence the 6-star medal):

Well, that was a lot about race jackets. Ha!

I’m linking up as always with Running on the Fly and Confessions of a Mother Runner as part of their Weekly Rundown. Check it out!