I think this was the first week during training that we were able to run all of our scheduled runs outside! I certainly did not miss the treadmill, that's for sure!

Tuesday's run of 4 miles was fast, and did not feel good at all for me. We finished in 33:09. My piriformis had been bothering me quite a bit before we started running and my shoulders were pretty tight from lifting the day before, so I'm sure that was most of my problem. On Thursday we ran 5 miles in 44:15 that felt great and I was happy with our pace! It's always nice to feel good and run faster when you can, but I think it's almost better when you know you can run slower when you want and know that you are capable of running faster when you feel good! It's all a part of the mental side of running in my opinion.

Saturday was Jeremy and I's first 10 mile run since we tapered for the Gobbler Grind half marathon in November. I woke up on Saturday feeling really excited that we were running our first 10 mile run for our full marathon training! My family had our weekly Saturday breakfast at my parents house, in which I brought over two hard boiled eggs and a thin toasted bagel with peanut butter while the family got to enjoy my mom's famous biscuits and gravy... needless to say I was jealous!

The weather for Saturday was in 50's and the rain held off, but unfortunately, it was still very windy. In the time I have been a runner, I have never used the Powerbar gels or GU's for energy during my runs. I found some new Powerbar "gummy" type chews and bought a few bags for us to try out. The run started out pretty miserable for both of us.. For me, I had a side stitch almost the entire 10 miles that I could not kick for very long. It was miserable breathing... and Jeremy said he wasn't feeling the best either.

Around mile 5 we decided to try a few of the strawberry-banana chews and they were surprisingly really good! At first it was hard to chew them and breathe at the same time with the awesome side stitch I had going, but I worked it out. I chased the chews with a little bit of Cytomax and I think it helped...unfortunately it didn't help with the side stitch though. We ended up finishing our 10 mile run in a respectable 1:29:44, which averaged out to be a 8:58 pace. Pretty good time for feeling terrible and with our face towards the wind for most of the time!

For the past few weeks I have been swimming on Sunday mornings after my long runs and have found that it has helped tremendously with stretching out my body - especially my legs. I swam about 1200 meters on Sunday, with 500m being continuous, Something I have not done in 12 years since I swam in high school. It felt great to get the muscles stretched out and made for a much better day for recovery.

Something that I've learned as a runner is, no matter how good you are with your running nutrition pre and post run, your fluid intake, and your stretching, you will always have those certain days that you cannot pin point the reason you are not running your best. For me, it all just comes down to that day and how I feel after I push the "start" button on my Garmin watch!