How is it September already!? I can’t believe I am into the double digits for training weeks, and over halfway there! With that being said, training did start to wear on me a bit this week. Lately it’s felt like all I do is go to work, come home and run, fix dinner, and then go to bed. But I’m sticking with it, and am keeping in mind that it’s only 8 more weeks and then I get to run my race.

Monday- 7 mile easy run on the Dora and New River Trails. This was an ‘easy’ run on my schedule and I ran it within my easy pace range, but it was anything other than easy. My legs were super tired from the 15 mile long run I had done the day before. But it was a really pretty day out.

Tuesday- 4 x 1200m track workout with 400m recovery in between. This workout totaled 6 miles and was my final track workout of training. There were some guys lining the football field, getting ready for the first high school game of the season, so I got to watch them work while I ran. I think I’d rather do a track workout than paint all those lines 🙂 If I was in charge it would be the most crooked field you’d ever seen!

Wednesday- Rest day.

Thursday- 8 mile tempo run, 10 miles total with the warm-up and cool down. I did this run in the evening over on the Dora and New River Trails. It was pretty hot and humid out, which made for a tough run. I had a rough time getting through the first 4 miles of the tempo portion, but I was running a gradual uphill from mile 1.5 through 4 (miles 2.5 through 5 below).

Once I turned around to head back, I was able to run a better pace and ended up averaging about 10 seconds faster per mile than my intended tempo pace (same thing as marathon pace).

Friday- 5 mile easy run with Sven. My legs were really tired from Thursday’s run, but it felt good to get my muscles working and to stretch out afterward. I had to run on the treadmill because I had lasagna in the oven that had to be tended to twice during my run 🙂

Saturday- 8 mile easy run with Sven. Our Saturday was packed full so I had to get up early and get this run done before the sun came up. I pretty much went non-stop from 5:00 AM to 11:00 PM that day, including going to the first Virginia Tech football game of the season (where I got to tailgate with Deb!).

Barry and I ended up with pretty sweet seats. Especially considering we were ticketless heading into the stadium, and bought these from a guy right before heading in for the game. 🙂

My cousin is on the team for his second year. He didn’t get much playing time last year, but he saw some action in the game on Saturday. He’s number 57, and he plays left guard.

Sunday- 10 mile long run on the Dora and New River Trails. This was a pretty tough run for me, due in part to my long day on Saturday. It’s not ideal when you are going non-stop all day and then don’t eat dinner until 11 PM. So I didn’t get up as early as I should have and also got to deal with the heat and humidity (it was in the mid-80’s at the end of my run).

I ended up running about 10 seconds per mile slower than what my long run pace is supposed to be. But honestly I was surprised I even managed that. I kind of wanted to just lay down on the side of the trail and take a nap in the shade. I did get passed by a truck on the trail at one point, which woke me up a bit. It was one of the Department of Conservation and Recreation employees, who manage the trail (since it’s technically a state park). The picture is blurry, but you can see the truck in the distance.

Total Miles: 46 miles
August Total: 192.95 miles (the most I’ve ever run in a single month!!)