To briefly recap the rest of our Philadelphia trip:
- We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner! The kids watched Elf between courses which was perfect, and M slept over. I am happy to say bedtime went pretty much without incident!
- On Friday, we headed to Laura’s for (now traditional) gingerbread house making. As always our kids did not want to leave!
- FAMILY PHOTO SHOOT! We hired a professional photographer as an anniversary gift for my parents! It was cold and a certain almost-7-year-old wasn’t the most cooperative but we got some gorgeous photos out of it anyway. Will share but need approval first 🙂
- Flight home early Saturday (bumpy descent but otherwise unremarkable) and we went DIRECTLY to Josh’s parents’ house to hang with his fam including his brother & fam who were still here from NYC.
Then I started to feel sick. Too much merriment + germ exposure I guess! Nothing terrible but I have a lot of gunk in my throat and a cough plus my voice is SHOT (I really hope it gets better by Tues because podcast eps don’t record themselves, you know!). I haven’t been sick in months (years!?) so I was due, but it’s still no fun.
SOOOO I wouldn’t say training took a back seat this week, but it was suboptimal. I only ran 5 days (not the usual 6) plus today’s run ended up being a fail due to (mild, but definitely impactful) illness. While 43 miles isn’t an EXTREME taper it’s definitely more of a taper than was planned!
Here’s a recap of the week in running, now with 2 weeks to go (as of yesterday)!
JAX Marathon Training: Third to Last Week
M: 16 x 800 m! Yes, this week began with a BANG because I knew I’d be traveling. I did many of these with my (fast) friend J — as always not a speed workout for her, but she helps with pacing and distraction! Paces were ~7:14 – 7:31/mi and pretty consistent with an average pace of 7:24 over the 8 miles of intervals. Rest periods were 60 seconds. I was REALLY happy with this workout! 11.6 mi total @ 8:27/mi ave total. Temp was 60F – felt amazing!
T: Rest (early travel day plus I was tired from that speed workout)
W: Morning run with Lydia (Strava friend from the blog) + Josh! 6 mi @ 9:30/mi around Haverford College. Lovely and cold!
R: Turkey trot day! 5K @ 7:34/mi ave plus brief warmup and longer cooldown to total ~6 mi.
F: Last cold run 8 mi @ 9:04/mi (5 mi with Josh)
S: Rest (another travel day)
S: 10 mi that was supposed to be 20. I didn’t feel 100% but I also didn’t feel feverish or terrible this morning so I went out and gave it a try, but when I ran my 6th tempo mile at ~8:35 and felt like I was dying (175 heart rate) I decided to call it and stopped.
This was a sign to STOP so I finally did.
Total = 43 miles
IN OTHER NEWS:
1- I FINALLY FINISHED THIS BOOK. Needless to say, I didn’t love it. Otherwise it would not have taken me TWO FREAKING MONTHS to read it! I should have abandoned ship honestly but I sort of knew the characters from other books and wasn’t miserable while reading it, but I also wasn’t motivated to pick it up.
I don’t share a lot of negative reviews, but I feel like she is a renowned and acclaimed writer and has a ton of adoring fans, so I feel okay about it. This one was just not for me!
2- IT’S DECEMBER! We all know exactly how that happened, but it seems abrupt. SOOO much to do!
3- BUT NOT BUYING KIDS’ GIFTS! Because we finished that on Black Friday, as planned. Hooray!! (We made a Hanukkah spreadsheet and then clicked “buy” a lot of times. It wasn’t tooooo hard. And I’m thrilled that it’s done!)
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3 Comments
sorry to hear about getting sick after the trip, hopefully it’s a quick one.
maybe an extra tapper works in your favor for the race.
Oh no! I’m sorry to hear you aren’t feeling well. I hope you bounce back quickly. Our youngest has been sick sick Monday. He had been fever free since Wednesday morning and had good energy levels so he seemed fine. But he’s been up multiple times/night since last sat and was up for over 30 min last night so I took him to minute clinic this am at CVS and he tested positive for strep and has a double ear infection, too! I really did not expect strep! I mean at one point he ran out of the exam room and into the check out area of target and I had to like sprint to catch him and carry him back to the room. I told the provider that I did not think a kid could have this much energy and have strep… gah. Hopefully no one else gets it as we saw a ton of family the last several days.
I really enjoyed Tell Me Everything but not every Strout book had worked for me. Like I did not care for Olive, Again. I felt like Olive was just plain mean rather than being a quirky moody character. But this last book worked. But yes, you totally should have abandoned it! I have been better about that this year. I rarely am glad I stuck with a book that isn’t working for me!!
Beautiful Montana pic and yay for gift shopping done!! I hope you feel better!!