I’m in the middle of my fourth week of marathon training and this is where I have to start tweaking the plan a bit. Last year I had to do this because of my work schedule was insane so I rarely had a mid-week run that went over five miles. I never missed a long run and I made sure that I some of those mid-week runs were extra intense. I ended up getting an 11 minute PR.

With my mother’s ongoing medical problems I don’t have the option of running after work so that means I’m running at 5:00 am. Because I’m slow I can only get three to four miles in and I have no intention of getting up any earlier. This will mean doing three mile runs three days a week. That’s a power number right there! Since I had success doing this last year I’m too concerned. I still think I can get a PR especially because I’m running better at this time than I was last year.

It’s been fun picking up on trends on these runs during the week. I usually have two rest days after my long run. One is technically supposed to be a cross training day but the closest I get to doing that is occasionally thinking about it. Tuesday is the first run of the week and my legs usually feel a bit heavy and my body is frustrated that I’m awake at 5:00 am. Wednesday’s run is better and Thursday always feels awesome.

This week my legs have been achy, yesterday I felt my normal sluggishness and today’s run wasn’t much better. I took my Stick to work today to get some extra rolling in. Hey, it gives me something to do during conference calls. They’re achy now as I write this so I’m wondering how tomorrow’s run is going to feel. Hopefully a little foam rolling will help but we’ll keep the run a low intensity one.

Ah, the achiness is a sure sign that you’re a month into marathon training and when the fun really starts.