1 Month to Philadelphia Marathon!

One month from today, I will be running the Philadelphia Marathon.  This still seems far away, but I know it'll go by quickly.

So much is going to happen between now and then.
-My best friend is coming to visit this weekend.
-I have two more long runs to do.
-SO many people are going to kill it at the New York City Marathon on November 4. (Can't wait to cheer for you all!!!)
-We'll know who the President for the next four years will be on November 6. (I'll leave my political views out of this, but PLEASE go my way.)
-I GET TO TAPER! Can you tell I'm excited about this?

I've now been training for this marathon for three and a half months (with two weeks off in the middle due to foot injury). It almost feels like yesterday that I started training, so I know that November 18 (my dad's birthday!) will be upon us (me) so quickly.  It's time to watch my training (hopefully) come together, prepare mentally and TAPER. There's that word again.  It's my favorite.  I can't wait until I'm TAPERING and get to talk about TAPERING. And then get to complain about TAPERING. I've always struggled mentally during TAPERING :) (even when it has only been a week for half marathons) so it should be interesting this time around, with gradually decreasing my miles for three weeks before the marathon. But as of right now, I can't wait for it.  Oh, did I already tell you that I'm excited about it?! Sorry.

This morning, to kick off the last month of training, I ran mile repeats.  Ever since getting tendinitis in my foot back in August, I've been horrible about speedwork.  Meaning, I haven't done it.  I've done LOTS of races (6 in 5 weeks), some tempo runs, and some MGP (marathon goal pace, mom!) runs, but I skipped most speedwork. I dread it. For weeks. It hurts, it's not fun, I struggle and I much prefer to run anything else.  But today, I did speedwork!  I'm running (pun) out of time, and don't want to regret anything on race day, so I got my butt out of bed at 6:25am and out the door by 6:50am for some mile repeats.

On the schedule today was:
8 miles including warm up, 4x1600 in 6:56 with 800 recovery and cool down.

Actually that's not true.  What was on the schedule today was a tempo run, but I did speedwork instead! That's right. I went out of my way to do speedwork for once!  I attempted some 800s last week, but my legs felt like total crap and everything hurt so I only made it through one and called that run a disaster. So today, I made up for it.

Today, I busted out my Oiselle Arm Warmers, which I was told make you feel like a badass (it's true!), and warmed up for a mile.  I always do my speedwork on the east side of Central Park, from 102nd Street to the bottom of the reservoir. That's a mile usually, depending on how my Garmin is feeling on any given day, and it's also the flattest part of the park. However, as you (especially) notice when doing speedwork, it is not ALL flat. There are two inclines while running south, and one while running north. These inclines seem like mountains during speedwork!

So today, here's how my run panned out:

Warm up mile (slow, Garmin was off. Shocker)
1x1600: 6:54
800 recovery
1x1600: 6:48
800 recovery
1x1600: 6:52
800 recovery
1x1600: 6:42
run until Garmin hits 8 miles, slow pace

That's right, my last mile was a 6:42! BOOM!

See you next week mile repeats, and Oiselle Arm Warmers! (I think they're the key to successful and almost-fun mile repeats!)

I'm starting off this last month feeling good. Hopefully it'll continue through to November 18! After my
10k race last Saturday, I'm beginning to finally feel like my training is paying off. With a few more long runs (16-18 this weekend and 20-22 next weekend), some more speedwork, tempo runs, and TAPERING, I'll hopefully be well trained, well rested and ready to RACE on November 18!

How's your training going? Are you TAPERING? Do you love it or hate it? Tell me about it for the next 10 days until I get to start TAPERING!