I feel like every tenth post I write should start with an auto-disclaimer: I know I’m a terrible blogger and it’s been more than a month since my last post. But I promise I’ve got some good stuff to share and I’ll try to be more regular! 🙂

So when we last left off, I’d taken a nasty spill on the trail (ok, on the sidewalk getting TO the trail) and developed an infection as a result, which put me out of commission for 10 days. When I returned, I was worried that my lack of training would set me back in a big way, but I was wrong.

I hit the trails on Day 10 and nailed an easy 5K in 10:57/mile and felt fantastic. Having to take 10 days off really made me appreciate being able to run, and I jumped right in with both feet.

The next day, Thursday, June 15th, I jumped in a bit TOO hard and raced the Corporate Fun Run 5K with my company for the second year in a row – and ran my very first sub-30 5K!

I’ll admit that the course was a tad short, but there have been SO many times where I missed a PR because a course ran long, so I’m taking it.

Unfortunately, after pounding the pavement 2 days in a row after taking so much time off (and REALLY pushing it in the final mile for that PR during the race), I woke up Friday with a very tender hip. This is a minor issue I developed back while I was training for the second Disney race weekend earlier this spring. I learned how to take care of it with lots of different stretches and foam rolling religiously, so after taking an extra few active rest days with biking and stretching and yoga, it felt better relatively quickly and I was able to continue NYC Marathon training in earnest.

Instead of being All Caps Abbi with every run (where my Broad City fam at?) I’m forcing myself to run a bit slower to avoid re-injuring it, and I’m feeling very strong as a result.

My training plan has me doing three shorter runs Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday, taking off Friday, doing cross training and a shakeout mile on Saturday, then running long Sunday. The only time I ran into an issue was with my mental game during my first double digit run of this cycle:

It was a tough 10 miler. A touch of food poisoning kept me up til 1am the night before, so I slept in and felt good when I got up, but by mile 6 my body (and mind) were ready to quit.

Too often I’ve quit early on long runs because my body felt tired and I don’t like seeing my pace suffer from walk breaks. But with marathon training I’ve made a deal with myself: it’s not about pace, it’s about distance. No matter how I have to cover the miles on those daunting long runs, I’m going to cover them, pace be damned.

So when I wanted to quit at mile 6 on this run, I pictured myself at mile 22 of the NYC Marathon and realized there’s no way I’d quit THAT race with just 4 miles to go. So I kept going. And while I walked a lot, I still finished all 10 miles (the final mile was the fastest!) and I strengthened my mental game at the same time. It was a great learning and growth opportunity, and I look forward to many more throughout this training cycle!

After that 10 miler, I’ve managed to stay consistent, and rocked a solid 9 miler over this weekend. My mid-week runs will start to grow in distance as of this week, and I’m especially looking forward to doing the NYRR Long Marathon Training Run this coming weekend – 2 loops around Central Park in July heat and humidity is going to be a real test, but I need some hill and outdoor training.

So now that we’re caught up on my training, I promise I’ll try to be more consistent – I’ve got a few races to recap, along with some other fun surprises in the works, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, tell me: How’s your training going? Do you have a latent hypercompetitive streak like me and All-Caps Abbi?