Lessons I've Learned During Marathon Training

Happy Hump Day, everyone! And for anyone training for the Philadelphia Marathon, can you believe we are less than 6 weeks away from the big day?! Even though this will be my third marathon, I'm still learning a lot of new things during this round of training! I was definitely busy during the other 2 rounds, but for some reason this round has just been rougher. Throughout all this, I have learned a couple things that have changed the way I continue with my training.

Rolling my legs right before I fall sleep because it's the only down time I get some days!

Be flexible. Up until September, my training schedule went exactly as planned. I ran the exact miles on the exact day I had planned. Now that I've added in my work schedule, my runs aren't happening exactly as I planned. I'm learning to just be flexible and fit in the runs when I can. This has resulted in running super early in the morning or later in the evening, running some miles on the treadmill, splitting a longer distance up into shorter distances through out the day, running two days in a row, having a gap of 3 days between runs, and so much more. Basically, I've just made it work!

Epsom salt baths +  catching up on This Is Us = perfect "me" time!

Give myself more "me time" other than when I'm running. I love running enough that I see it as "relaxing" and "me time." I look forward to getting lost in thought as I pound the pavement. That relaxes me. It can also wear me down though without any other forms of relaxation. Due to my limited free time, I've had to sacrifice a lot of my "me time" in order to squeeze in my runs. While I love that time, I also need to give myself time to recover since I'm constantly on the go. I've been trying my hardest to take some time each night to either relax in the bath or just chill on the couch but I definitely need to find some more time. 

First step for me is to make sure I have a good breakfast each morning to start my day right!

Fuel myself better. Usually food is no problem with me. I love to eat and I love to eat foods that are good for my active lifestyle. Lately I've been struggling with eating enough to keep me full. On a lot of my runs lately I've been finding myself getting hungry very early on. I'm chalking that up to not taking the time to eat a full meal. More often than not, my lunches consist of a salad without protein because I've been too lazy to make chicken, veggies, and fruit. Sounds great, right? It's healthy for sure but definitely needs to be amped up with protein! My goal for the rest of training is to make sure all my lunches have a good amount of protein in order to keep me going throughout the day.

Sometimes I feel like I'm falling apart with the amount of pain relief items on my night stand...

Listen to my body. This wasn't too hard to figure out but I tend to ignore what my body is saying for the sake of my training schedule. Lately I've been evaluating how my body feels (more importantly, how my right ankle feels) and decide from there if my workout that day is appropriate or not. I have changed so many speed runs into easy runs and have even altered a couple distances. In years past I would've just pushed through the pain but that has only resulted in injury. This year I'm learning and listening to my body so that I can go into my third marathon uninjured and feeling great! 

Question of the Day: What are some lessons you have learned through any kind of race training?