Marathon Training - Week 21 Wrap Up

Nov 5th-Nov 11th ~ 35.9 Miles

Day 140 ~ 6 Recovery Miles
Day XX ~ Rest
Day 141 ~ Boot Camp & 3.5 Miles
Day 142 ~ Run 8 Miles
Day 143 ~ REST
Day 144 ~ REST
Day 145 ~ 18 Mile Long Run

Meal prep this week - My Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl

I swear, I should just skip rest days so I can keep the numbers right. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

So, Marathon training is FAST wrapping up. I had one more long run this week, which my chiropractor advised against. Not the ENTIRE run, but no more than twenty miles.That was after telling me no more dancing on pine cones, which of course made me laugh harder than it should have. See, I had a major panic after my long run Wednesday night. I kept having these super sharp, pretty painful spikes in the side of my knee, so much so it felt like my leg was going to buckle. It didn't happen a lot, but it happened frequently enough to cause concern.

When I finished running that night, got home and got settled, the muscles above and below my knee got super tight, and I still had that spike of pain every once in a while. I stretched. I slept it off. Everything felt like it was going to be fine on Thursday, then I had to walk up three steps at work. Let's just say I was on the phone with the doctor's office as soon as they opened Thursday morning.

Dr. Wonderful asked me everything I'd done as usual, then I told him about the pine cone during my last long run. I don't know if I shared the pine cone story, but... running UP Neshoba in the almost sunrise, my foot landed on a freaking huge pine cone. If it had been a snake, this might be a very different conversation. Anyway, my left foot rolled forward and to the left. I screamed like a banshee, nearly gave Yella a heart attack as she lunged for me. We laughed it off, and I kept running. Everything fine Saturday. As you can see, everything wasn't fine. Dr. Aaron informed me that I had a new injury, to which he taped for me, which gave me a fairly successful run on Saturday.

Since we're talking about Saturday--like my segue? Anyway, it was cold and early, and my heart really wasn't into doing two laps of eleven miles around the same dreary parts of downtown and midtown Memphis. I figured out where to cut a mile out of the loop, which would've given me the twenty, but ugh... LOOPS! There's nothing I hate more than running a loop. So boring. I'll do it, but I'd rather visit the dentist on no caffeine day. Yeah. No.

Kirsten, my brilliantly insane running buddy, told me she hated loops too. We commiserated while running in the cold, watching our breath, and charging through downtown on how we could get the miles without doing the loops. She was deep in thought, doing math while I happily plodded along to whatever dance club jam was coming out of my phone while she muttered numbers beside me.

Eventually, her plotting and mathing led us to changing the plan and going off course for one of the funnest, most epic adventures of my marathon training. We took off toward the river and ran cross state lines! We went from Midtown Memphis, to Downtown, to Arkansas, and back again. There's been so much good change in my city, change I'd never seen until now. Martyrs park was so freaking cool. It would've been a lot cooler if we'd been about 20 minutes later and the bathroom at the visitors center had been open...

The last few miles weren't fun for either of us, but I had an injury, and we were both cold and flu season hungover. We still made the best of it and laughed along the way. Two more long runs before the big day!