Week 2 – Detroit FreePress International Marathon prep (Jan 12 – Jan 18)

Welcome to the second week, everyone! If you haven’t, please check out the first week experience here.

Let us get right in to it, shall we?

Day 1 – Sunday, January 12, 2020
I was pretty excited for this run. It was Sunday and the distance of 3 miles seemed quick to me now. I think my running plan is really working for me, and if I just stick to it, I will be able to achieve what I want to – which is finishing the Half-Marathon in April and the Full-Marathon in October, without an injury.

I finished the 3-mile run in 36 minutes 42 seconds with an average speed of 12.13 minutes per mile.

A super improvement if you compare it with the first day of the first week, where I ran with 13.29 minutes per mile speed.

Here we go with my Apple Watch.

Day 2 – Monday, January 13, 2020
The second day was the rest day. Well, not “actual rest” day. I did go to CrossFit that day and worked my ass off.
Here’s the workout that I did that day.

Day 3 – Tuesday, January 14, 2020
This was the first time I was running 5-mile after the first day. The task of running 5 miles on a weekday sounded a little daunting to me, especially because I was going for this run after a long day at work.

The one thing that I learnt this day was it is very difficult to keep motivating yourself. So, obviously I had to find out a way to motivate myself and I did that while I was running.

So, I was using the AirRunner (I talked about this in the last post), I noticed that I could see my reflexion in the glass window, so, I took off my T-shirt and looked myself in the reflexion, and I told myself if you want to keep up with the guy in the reflexion and maintain that physique, then better get to work and run these 5 miles.

Surprisingly, it worked and have been using it since!

Talking about the run, I felt good about it, since I improved tremendously compared to the last 5-mile run.

It took me 1 hour 1 minute 16 seconds with an average pace of 12.15 minutes per mile to finish the 5 mile run.

It was a huge improvement over 13.29 mins/hr pace compared to the last week. Here’s my Apple Watch after the run.

Day 4 – Wednesday, January 15, 2020
One more rest day, actually I should call it “CrossFit” day.

Here’s the workout I did this day, skipping the run. I still remember this workout almost killed me!

Day 5 – Thursday, January 16, 2020
Though my plan had this as a run day, my friends, Anupam and Monika wanted me to join them for the workout, so I did that, planning my run on Friday.

The CrossFit workout that I did was so intense, I instantly regretted, but I was glad I could myself through it.

Here’s the workout that we did that day.

Day 6 – Friday, January 17, 2020
My previous plan had this day as the “official rest day”, but as I did my CrossFit workout last night, I did move my 3-mile run from Thursday to Friday.

I did not feel that much a pain finishing this 3-mile run. I used the same “reflexion strategy” to motivate myself and finished the run before I knew it.

Here’s my Apple watch after the run.

It took me 35minute 15 seconds with an average pace of 11.43 minutes per mile to finish the 3 mile run.

Day 7 – Saturday, January 18, 2020
Ok. We’re officially at the end of the second week. I planned my time and run quite meticulously so that I could finish my pre-planned 3-mile run, follow it by the 9 AM CrossFit workout and finally finishing it with my favorite Saturday brunch.

The one thing that I did not plan for was the winter storm. ❄️🥶

For people in MidWest, they will remember this as one of the coldest nights of the season. I still remember it took me good 15-20 minutes to clean the car and get rid of the snow sitting on top of it. It was a good 6 inch snow.

After spending that much time cleaning up my car, I thought the roads will be cleaned, but to my dismay, I had to drive at 25 mph on my way to the gym, which is a 40 mph speed zone. I had to be very careful with the drive as I saw many cars stuck in snow and visibly struggling with it. I must say I was fortunate to not have stuck in the snow and safely made it to the gym, which took good 45 minutes.

The moral of the story, I did not have enough time to finish my 3-mile run and had to settle for 1.5 miles. I was disappointed with it, but you cannot do in front of the mother nature.

I finished the 1.5 mile run in 19 minutes 6 seconds with an average pace of 12.41 minutes per mile.

It was not a time to be sad about the pace and time taken, as I followed the run with an awesome CrossFit workout.

My Apple watch showing y Indoor run.

And the CrossFit workout.

Even though I did end the weekend on a low note, I think, I am okay with that. Just a little hump on the road, I am sure, I will get away with it soon!