This week is a turning point in my training plan. I’ve come to realize that it is very unlikely I’ll be able to keep up my level of running. By body just can’t recover quickly enough. This week i went out for a 11-mile run on Thursday and my legs just felt dead. If this was an isolated incident I wouldn’t have worried about it too much, but I know I’ve been constantly tired for the last few weeks.
I’m going to cut back my running a bit during the week and do just 1 medium-long run during the week. I’ll continue to run long on Sundays. My plan for the coming week would thus be:

I would run the same runs during the week and only the Sunday run will vary. This would still give me 42 miles for the week. I will make every effort to stay at 40 miles. The difference would be that during the week, I’ll be resting or just running an easy 5 miles and just the one medium-long run instead of the 2 I’ve been doing so far.

Today is probably going ot be a turning point in my marathon training.  My 11-mile easy run ended up being 1.5 miles.  My body just can’t keep up.

I posted a message in the RunningAhead Forums looking for some advice, but I’m pretty sure I will have to change my running plan so I run less and try and get more recovery time in.

Last week was a bit of a slacker week for me. I was in S. FL on business.  I managed to do the two longer runs on Tuesday and Thursday of 8 and 9 miles respectively, but I slacked off on the Wednesday and skipped the recovery 5 miler.

Also, my flight back to TX on Friday got delayed and diverted to Houston and by the time I made it back to Dallas, it was close to midnight.  I decided to skip Saturday’s recovery run also.

Other than that, the week had started with an 18-miler on the Sunday and it went quite well.  I could tell that my body was able to handle it much better than the first 18-miler I ran the previous Sunday.

The week started off quite well.  I was schedule to run 17 miles on Sunday, but I felt pretty good and I decided to throw in an extra mile to make it a nice round 18-mile run.

After that, it was all downhill.  From the Monday, I started waking up with a sore throat.  Monday was a rest day, but Tuesday was a 10-mile run.  I struggled through my run and decided to call it a day after just 5 miles.

Wednesday was a 5-mile run, but I felt a bit better and decided to run an extra couple of miles making it 7 miles for the day.

I woke up Thursday feeling even worse than the previous days.  I had a 10-mile run scheduled, but I just felt too ill to go run.  I even contemplated taking a sick day from work.  My wife suggested I at least get up and take a shower and see how I felt after that.  I took her advice and I felt well enough to work, but I was sure to take cold medicine.

Friday was a rest day and I started to feel a bit better, but my throat was still bothering me.
Today was a 5-mile run, but I decided to throw in an extra rest day.  I figure the most important workout I have each week is my Sunday long run so I’ll rest today and see if my body will let me run an 18-miler tomorrow.

In the end, I managed 30 miles for the week whereas I should have run 47 miles.

I’m travelling on business next week.  Next week was supposed to be a recovery week so I’ll probably take it easy again.  Maybe I can come back from that trip fully recovered and ready to resume my training at full speed.