Walt Disney World Marathon Training Recap Week 13

Let me lead this post with this sentence…I am officially done with the core part of this training cycle!! Sunday was our last long run and now we have the next three weeks to “rest and recover” with our mileage scaling down on the weekends. The mileage is going up on our week day long runs but our longest run total over the course of these next three weeks will be this Sunday with 12 miles. Let me tell you, 12 miles is nothing at this point!

It’s all settling in now that this is really going to happen, and this past week they finally released the waivers, meaning you received your bib number and they also revealed the corral placement…let me tell you that is quite a shocker. This year, the corrals for all of the weekend’s events only goes up to H. In previous Disney races and from what my friend Kim told me about this years race was the corrals went all the way back to P. There’s over 14,000+ participants registered which means we are about to get cozy in these corrals. However, I am VERY thankful to have ended up in corral F.

In other news, here’s how my week went down in the very peak of my training:

Week 12/11-12/17

Monday: Rest day. I was definitely exhausted after all the weekend fun I had with the 5K and the Half.

Tuesday: There were no camps taking place due to the training being out of town for a conference, so a group of us met up and did a ladder style workout left by our trainer, Drew. We also logged 3 miles before the workout. Later on that evening I had a massage scheduled and boy did that feel so good! I really need to get more consistent with those again!

Wednesday: 7 miles to start the day off. The company was great and the miles were strong!

Thursday: Rest day.

Friday: 2 easy miles before camp.

Saturday: Rest day.

Sunday: The big day – 21 miles, our last long run before tapering starts! This was probably my best long run to date for this training cycle. I took the miles one by one as to not overwhelm myself mentally and I felt great. I did everything right in the few days leading up to the run as far as hydration and fuel. The morning of I set my alarm for 3:30am, and treated the morning as if it were race day. Yes, even on race day I will be up some where’s around 3:30am. Pre-run I fueled with a peanut butter protein pancake sandwich, and for the actual run, instead of fueling with PB&J, I used Honey Stinger Waffles and Cliff Shot Gels. We did stop around mile 18 and walked to 21, my knee was a little sore and my friend Kim was having some pain in her leg from her calf up to her hamstring. We managed to keep a 15:00-15:30/mile pace during our walks and overall our pace for the full 21 came in at 13:30 which is amazing and give us a good buffer and keeps us our risks low for getting swept off the course. We must keep a 16:00/mile pace ahead of the “balloon ladies” who are the very last to take off the start, thankfully they are a good 8,000+ behind me!

This is the first long distance run where I did not have any post run knee pain following the run or even the day after wards. I just felt great in general after the run. I took an hour nap and was good to go for the rest of the afternoon, in fact I didn’t even spend the whole afternoon on the couch like I have the past couple of runs. I’ve definitely noted everything I did leading up to and on the day of the run so I can try and so the same race weekend so I can have a strong finish just as I did during this run.