I cannot believe that the Chicago Marathon is less than 40 days away now.  August was a big mileage month for me and probably the most I’ve run in one month.    I almost ran every run on the schedule except for a Friday 10 miler due to illness.  Here are the highlights of training for August.

Sleep and Priorities are Important

I missed a 10 mile run because I had a fever and a chest cold on a Friday. The following Sunday run called for 20 miles, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to run it.  But on Saturday I was feeling better and the fever was gone, so I thought I could probably run it.   It was going to be a challenging hilly course.

That Saturday night was the McGregor – Mayweather fight and I winded up staying up for it.  I got a total of 2.5 hours sleep before going out for the 20 mile run.  I felt okay for the first 5-6 miles but I didn’t realize then that my pace was a bit slower than my typical long run pace.  Around mile 8-9 I glanced at my watch and saw that I was running slow and decided to exert more energy, which is something I don’t normally do on long runs.  Needless to say, that led to more fatigue and I was gassed out by mile 13.  Running came to a crashing halt around mile 16, and I was 5 miles from home due to some miscalculations of when I should turn around.

Mile 17 was all walking uphill, and then I ran the downhill on mile 18. Final distance was 18.3, 1.7 miles short of the 20 miles. It took me 3.5 hrs to get to that.  Contrast that with the 18 milers 2 weeks prior to this, and I finished at 2:55.

So some lessons were learned! Still always learning from my mistakes.  The end of training is getting closer. I have 5 long runs left – 20,15,22,15, and then the race.

Also, weight-wise, I’m under 210.  I think I’ll probably be around 200 for the race. 190 would have been great but not sure I’ll get there.

Summary:

Total # of runs: 18

Total miles: 157

Avg run length: 8.7 miles