Yesterday saw the end of Week 4 of my marathon training schedule, and it ended with a bang with a tough half marathon race. I ran the Ralston Creek Half Marathon in Arvada, Colorado, and phew, it was a toughie! A fantastic event, though – really well organized and the course was beautiful with some incredible views. Getting to those incredible views was the hard bit, with a challenging switchback / hairpin hill to run up. These are psychologically difficult as you can see what’s to come, as well as being physically tough! Before that, too, in mile 5, there was a long slow climb up a hill. This was followed by a nice downhill, but then we all noticed the big switchback in front of us! All in all, though, it was a fun race and a great experience, with some downhills too to balance out the uphills. My time was a bit slower than I’d have ideally liked, but with such a challenging course I was happy with it, and I was thrilled to win third place in my age group, F45-49!

The rest of last week’s training was a bit up and down again. A combination of getting over being sick the weekend of February 11th/12th, then some snowy weather last Wednesday meant that I didn’t push myself to do any speedwork last week. I just ran steady or easy. I also never got any cross-training done again – I MUST get back into it this week. Strength training was a bit spotty too, although I did do core exercises after all my runs except for Sunday’s race, and I did a few other strength exercises after Thursday’s run too. My total running mileage for the week was 45.5 miles.

Hopefully this week I can return to speedwork, cross-training and do more strength training!

Wishing everyone a great week!

Thanks for reading!

Lynne.