Marathon training (and fundraising), week 4

Good thing I don't have to bike before the Boston Marathon!

Working hard, going nowhere

Running in circles

On Saturday I joined my triathlon club for a brick (bike/run) workout.  We alternated between cycling intervals on our bikes and running on the track, with some strength work mixed in to make our legs extra-tired.  Not exactly a marathon-specific workout, but it was fun!  In a quad-burning kind of way.

More relevant to marathon preparation, I ran 39 miles last week as follows:

Tuesday - 7 miles on the track with TRIbe
                warm up, drills, strides
                2 x 400m (pacing), 2 mile time trial!
                cool down, lunges/squats, core
Thursday - 7 miles on trails (Baylands)
Friday - 3 easy miles on trails (Baylands)
Saturday - 6 miles on the track with TRIbe
Sunday - 16 miles in the rain (Los Gatos Creek Trail) 

Garmin data from Sunday is here.  Too bad my watch doesn't record total rainfall!  Or water accumulated in my shoes.  There probably is a Garmin device that does that.

Soggy post-run self-portrait

The 2 mile time trial is quite possibly my least favorite workout ever.  It hurts!  My club runs this workout a few times throughout the year, but it never gets any easier because you're always supposed to run as hard as you can!  It's a great way to benchmark your current fitness level, determine pacing for workouts, and track your progress through the season.  But it hurts!

Fundraising update:

In the month of January, we raised $2,005 for FARA!  Woo hoo!

And last week I received the first anonymous donation.  Since I can't send him/her a proper thank you note, I'll give a big blog THANK YOU to anonymous!  I really appreciate the generous contribution.  And thank you to everyone out there for reading the blog, or making a donation to FARA, or both!  Your support is amazing and inspiring.