Houston Marathon Training Week 5

54 days to go or in 7 Sundays I will be running the Houston Marathon! Let’s talk about training 54 days out of Marathon day.

Cross training went so well that I realize that the class is becoming easy unless I add a little more weight to the bars in order to keep it challenging. My shoulders beg to differ though: the last reps are shoulder focused and I felt the burn. I’m feeling stronger. The fact that I am showing up and doing what it takes has made a difference. I feel that I need to do more core exercises on my own, so that will be my challenge for this week.

Runners run, so that’s what I did this week. My husband was out of town so the little time I had for myself was for running. I also ran in the treadmill once. Turns out the gym replaced all their treadmills and I replaced my shoes this week too.

I’ve had a challenging time keeping up with my shoe mileage. I figured it was time to switch because I was having some knee pain and I kept telling myself I needed to count my miles. I have at least 430 miles in the old pair which means it’s right about time for a change.

I wore the new pair again for the long run which was lovely. No knee pain or whatsoever. I ran 14 miles with my running group which was so incredibly great. Because of Chicago I ran by myself a lot this season, so getting back to the group has been a sweet reward.

There’s camaraderie in group runs. I also find a lot of encouragement and wisdom from the seasoned runners. I learn something new every time I run with the group. I also solve all the world’s problems by the time we’re done running. Yep, we have a lot of fun in our running group. Last Saturday for some reason, I ended up hearing about different marathons to try.

My goal for Houston is to PR. Running the Houston Marathon sub-5 hours will be incredible. I know I have it in me to do it.

I’m also setting long-term running goals and qualifying for Boston is one of those goals. I’m not expecting to do this short term because the Boston qualifying time for my age group is 3:35:00

The good news is that the older you get, the more flexible this time becomes. While I do not want to wait till I’m 80 to qualify, I do hope to improve my time annually until I get there. I also want to improve my time without getting injured. It will be quite the journey and I realize that each step counts.

I believe in the power of words. 9 years ago (I went to my blog archives to get this number) I said that I wanted to run a marathon and it happened twice this year. I hope to be a good steward of my words. I pray that I say positive things about my training no matter what I am facing.

Thanks for coming in this journey with me!
Previously in this Series:
• Houston Marathon 2015 Week 4
• Houston Marathon 2015 Week 3
• Houston Marathon 2015 Week 2
• Houston Marathon 2015 Week 1
Archives:
• Chicago Marathon 2014
• Houston Marathon 2014