Week Fourteen - Philadelphia Marathon Training

Monday - Rest day - 1 mile run

Tuesday - 45 min easy run

Wednesday - Intervals - 10 min warm up, 8 min run, 90 seconds rest X 4

Thursday - 45 min cross train - walk

Friday - 40 min easy run

Saturday - Long Run - 2 hours (Mushroom Cap Half Marathon, 2:28)

Sunday - 1 mile run+20 min walk

I can't believe it's only 2 weeks until race day!

This was another decent week of training. Monday was rainy so I stuck with my treadmill but otherwise, the weather was wonderful. Thursday's schedule was cross training which I usually use my spin bike for but the weather was so beautiful that I walked outside and called it cross training.

Saturday, I did the Mushroom Cap Half Marathon in Kennett Square, the mushroom capital of the world. Its a really nice race, I haven't done it since 2019. It turns out three years is enough to forget there are some brutal sections of the course. The first half was great. I felt amazing and was averaging 10:35-10:45 pace. The second half has a lot of gravel and a lot of hills. My quads feel it today for sure but I averaged just over 12ish minute pace. Due to the way my watch display was set for my scheduled two hour run, I didn't know the cumulative distance. I saw the mile 9 marker and the next mile marker I saw was 12. I was pretty sure I'd missed the mile 10 marker but I didn't realize I missed 10 and 11. It was a pleasant surprise when I saw there was just 1.1 miles to the finish. The last half a mile is a big uphill and then a turn and straight downhill to the finish. I forgot how lunch that uphill feels, it seems like you'll never get to the top.

I used to work in Kennett Square, in fact the race ended in the parking lot of one of the buildings I worked in. That was when I started running, I did my first half marathon and my first marathon while working there. I took many lunch walks around town and it always takes me back to see the YMCA where I ran endless laps on a 1/16 mile indoor track on cold dark nights after work training for my first marathon.