Day 93: Improving My Marathon/Life Balance (Update #2)

Note: related posts “Improving My Marathon/Life Balance” and “Improving My Marathon/Life Balance (Update #1)“

Balancing marathon training with the rest of life has been going well. Overall, I have been loving the Galloway program. Yesterday I did ten mile repeats. That is, I ran for a mile at a faster pace, took a four-minute walking break, and then repeated another nine times. I am definitely feeling a bit tired today, but not nearly as tired as I was last week after my 23-miler.

Intense long runs aside, I am appreciating the challenging-but-still-lighter weekend run schedule. Yesterday’s mile repeats went fabulously. This was my fourth session doing mile repeats, and I finally feel I am getting the hang of running at a controlled pace with walking breaks (I walked for 30 seconds in the middle of miles 1-5, 22 seconds in the middle of miles 6-10). I’m also pleased that I could have other weekend plans, including going to a movie on Thursday night with my wife, volunteering at the Urban Cow 5k Race on Saturday morning, and later that morning helping out for a play.

I’m also loving the walking breaks. They mellow out the runs and help with recovery. While there is no way around the fact that the remaining long runs are looong (I have a 26 miler training run coming up in a couple of weekends, and three weeks after that the “big one,” 29 miles!), the overall schedule and distribution of runs is quite manageable.

Here are the upcoming weekend runs:

Getting closer!