April | 2018 | See Becca Try to Tri

5 weeks until the Mountains to the Beach Marathon. I have been struggling with two things. First, running downhill. This has been going of for several weeks and it seems to be getting better but it isn’t 100% better yet. I have been using the COMPEX machine, extra exercises to isolate the weak muscle, and running in areas that don’t have a lot of downhill. I am still not 100% sure I will be able to run M12B because of all the downhill so San Diego is still a possibility.

Second, I have been struggling during my long runs (anything over 2 hours) and not recovering quickly. So this weekend my coach gave me a run of 3:20 (total running time this week was 7+ hours, that is HUGE for me). She rarely gives me a run that long but she knew I needed a bit of a confidence booster. I had told myself if I couldn’t run at least 3 hours successfully, then the marathon was out for this year.

After this I managed to run the last 20 minutes with no issues! BOOM!!! During the run I was totally on top of my nutrition, hydration, AND salts. I had a protein shake immediately after running. And after I took a shower, I spent 30 minutes in my Rapid Reboot recovery boots followed by a nap!

I feel AMAZING today!!! You have to plan your runs AND recovery!!! It is so important!

Graphs by SportTracks

This is encouraging… You can see that I am increasing my total miles each month but also decreasing my pace. This is exactly what I need to do to meet my goal of Boston Qualifying in May.

But we have an issue… running downhill hurts. CRAP! The race I am signed up for is mostly downhill.

Mountains to Beach Marathon

So if I can’t run downhill we may have big problem on our hands (left knee to be more specific). I saw the doctor yesterday and he confirmed what my coach thought was the issue, a weak VMO. So the plan is: