5 weeks until the marathon

I've been fighting off this cold all week. It wasn't too bad the beginning of the week. Tuesday was 9 miles with 5x600m at 6:54 pace with a 90 second jog in between. I got up Wednesday morning to do the scheduled 14 mile run. The cold started to get the better of me and I had a bad hacking cough. I ran just over a quarter of a mile and started coughing again. My chest hurt from the coughing so I stopped and went back to bed.

I bowled Wednesday night and was uncomfortable all night long. As I was driving home afterwards, my left knee started to hurt. It was on the outside of the knee and wasn't similar to the knee problem I had last year. I figured I probably twisted it during bowling. It wasn't as bad on Thursday morning so I decided to run 7 miles. The knee seemed fine during the day so I went ahead and did the other 7 miles that night. Friday I did the double recovery runs that were scheduled for Thursday - 6 in the morning and 4 at night.

The schedule for Saturday called for an 8-15K race. Instead of an actual race, I did another race pace run. I decided to stick with the same pace as two weeks ago. I did 2 miles warm up and then did 5 miles at 7:03 pace. I didn't feel like I was going too fast and didn't have any problems finishing the 5 miles. I did another 3 miles at recovery pace as a cool down. According to McMillan's running calculator, that predicts a 3:27:22 (7:55 pace) for the marathon. Since this wasn't an all out race, I feel pretty good about my goal pace of 7:47.

Sunday was an uneventful 18 miles giving me 61 for the week.