Will run for bling bling

So now that the triathlon season is officially over, I am embracing this temper tantrum of running a marathon. It will be my fourth. I know how hard it is to understand the reasons I'd want to put myself through this again, but let's say that I want to finish the year with a bang and not feeling hungry for more. I had a sneaky suspicion that the 70.3 was not going to hurt enough, and indeed, it did not. November seemed to be a reasonable time to end all hard workouts before starting to focus on Ironman training. My coach wanted me to take September and October off, but I threw him a curveball by signing up for the Hamilton Marathon on November 3rd (and then we fought about it fiercely). But I figured that I would still have 2 more months this year to sit on my ass and get fat. Ok, that's really not the plan here, but I'll have to work twice as hard in the "downtime" not to pack on the pounds. Sigh.

Then a friend of ours from the tri club told us that he was going to run a half marathon in Picton in 2 weeks from now, so we decided to make it a mini family vacation and go for it as well. Talk about a double whammy! For a moment I really thought that I'll give my coach a heart attack. But he survived and I hope that he made peace with my rebellious inner child by now. We also found out that Nicole and her friends were going to be in Picton at the same time, and from one thing to another, she signed up too! We're all going to make it a training run, although our paces are all over the map and I doubt that we'll be running in a pack. But I'm sure that we'll find each other at the finish line, and since we'll be staying at the same cottage, eating marshmallows around the fire.

My training plan had me do a few recovery runs and so far so good. Nothing hurts, and it's rather puzzling. I had a total absence of muscle soreness after Muskoka and the following day I was already running all around my workplace like usual. Yesterday I went on my first "long" run, a 14km in the rain and it was so much fun, I didn't want it to end. What I also noticed since I started running again is that I managed to stay both under 6min/km and 160bpm (Z2-Z3) every single time, so I cannot help but wonder if this is a new trend, or maybe I am turning bionic. Within the last two weeks I ran a cumulative distance of 35km, which is a pretty conservative approach because there is no reason to go all out. Yet, I'm feeling like a newborn, and still on top of the world.

Riri the Happy Giant

At the same time, a new workout showed up in the plan: core workout (3x/week). I've been dreading to start this for a year, and for a good reason. It looks like this (and it is just the beginning!):

• 2 x 10 deep squats no weights
• 2 x 10 rear lunges each leg
• 2 x 10 hamstring curls on ball
• 2 x 1 min front plank
• 2 x 15 supermans
• 2 x 30 sec each side sideplanks
• 3 x 25 bicycle abs
• 2 x 15 hip raise
• 1 x 10 single leg squat

It brought upon me such misery, that I thought I would need crutches to get out of bed. My core is not in bad shape, but man, all those lunges and squats killed me! I managed to do only two of these workouts because I am too freaked out that I'm going to snap a tendon or a butt muscle. Baby steps... I still have a marathon to run. And going back to the why of the marathon, it's not my A race this year, so my goal is to run it easy and maybe, just maybe I'll get a PR. And a shiny new medal (make that two, with the Picton half). Last but not least, I LOVE running marathons, but I'm afraid to say it out loud, or someone will try to lock me up.