T-Minus 16 Weeks...

What a week/weekend! Technically speaking Coach EK had this past week being my first week of official Marathon training and although I did do all my workouts per plan, I still counted it as a base training week and allowed myself one last fun long run. The weather was crazy all week, Tuesday's hills were run in the mid-30's (practically a heat wave!!!), but it was short lived and each passing day the temps kept dropping... Wednesday's MLR (Medium Long Run) was miserably cold, Thursday's pace workout was worse with big wet snowflakes soaking me through, and by Friday night when I looked at the weather forecast for Saturday morning I was already shaking in my boots!

Saturday morning I updated my FB staus with: "Why do I do this again?!!? Oh yeah cuz I love it and am training for a marathon. Time to layer up! 10* feels like -1*. Yowza!!!"

It was crazy cold outside but I wasn't about to wuss out and admit defeat by turning to the dreadmill, I had a run date with Jessie and we were going to tackle it like champs! She had 12 miles on deck, her longest run to date, and seeing as how I've ran so many freaking 10 milers over the last month or so I was a-ok going the extra. (Plus who doesn't love being there to support a friend when they tackle a monumental mileage moment?!?!)

So with the coldest temps I've ever faced to date, we headed out. The first mile was miserable, straight into the wind, but once we turned out of it, it became bearable and the miles started to tick off as they always do when you're with company. I had planned our route to encompass all the sights of the city without ever being more than 2 miles away from the house in case it got to be too miserable. The convo took my mind off my numb hands and we looked forward to the water Spike was nice enough to drop for us at various appointed mileage markers as we made our way up roads, down paths, through neighborhoods, etc... At the halfway-ish point we stopped at the local coffee shop to bathroom break and Gu and I found out why my pants hadn't felt quite right the entire time we had been running:


In anticipation of the chilly temps I had layered my knee shorts underneath my pants and had put them on backwards! WTH?!?!? Frigging hilarious, especially considering I had pee'd approx 72 times before we left the house that morning and never noticed the tags once! At this point it was just too much work to rectify the situation and since I had made it 6 miles with them this way, what's 6 more? With a laugh and a shrug we headed back out into the elements to wrap up the rest of the run.

Behold the arctic tundra of Mid-Michigan

Soon enough we got to mile 10 and although I had strategically planned this mile to be within a short walk to the apartment in case we wanted to abort the mission, we were both feeling good enough to go the extra, so we did. The last mile was even more miserable than the first mile with head wind and was a solid sheet of ice, but when the Garmin's rolled 12 we felt like some serious bad@sses! Our faces were numb, our hair was literally frozen, but we had gutted it out and made it happen! There was a little hooting and hollaring of triumph and as we passed two other runner ladies we cheered them on for being warriors too. This run was such a confidence booster and character builder for us both and I am now ready to hunker down and get serious for what lay ahead both mileage and weather wise. I am officially 16 weeks or 111 days out from the Cleveland Marathon and it is GO TIME!

Did you brave the elements this weekend for your race or long run or are you a lucky brat like LB (who likes to brag about his glorious warm weather) and just enjoyed another day in the life?

Big shout out of congrats to my Florida running frenemy Harold for scoring a HUGE PR at the Palm Coast Half Marathon this weekend! Congrats buddy!!!