Hi! I hope y’all had a great weekend. I spent my weekend at the beach in Isle of Palms for our Core Desire Yoga retreat. It was such an amazing weekend. Full recap to come tomorrow.

Thanks much for your support in my announcement that I’m going to tackle 13.1 yet again. After taking a four-year hiatus from long-distance running (mostly due to injury, frustration and generally being “over it”), it’s been fun to get back into it again…on my own terms. Read about how how I fell back in love with running (along with links to my running history) in this post, The New Rules of Running.

I also LOVED reading about all of the races you guys are training for this fall. I was especially pumped to hear from those of you training for Marine Corps. That was my last marathon (maybe ever?) and it holds such a special place in my heart. Please keep me posted on all of your race finishes and accomplishments this fall!

I ran 18.2 miles this week and it was one of those magical running weeks where they all felt really good. I can’t tell you how refreshing it has been to be running 100% pain-free while being stronger and faster than ever. Maybe this getting older and wiser is a good thing. 🙂

Here’s my workout recap for the week!

Monday

Hot yoga

Tuesday

2 mile treadmill + strength

Treadmill…

1 mile at 8:40 to warm up
1 mile speed starting at 7:30 pace working down to 6:15

Strength:

4 rounds:

15 back squats (75#)
10 pull ups (band assisted)
15 kettlebell swings
10 push ups

Wednesday

4.5 mile run

Thursday

BodyPump

Friday

REST

Saturday

3.7 mile run + stand up paddle boarding

I spent the weekend at Wild Dunes Resort leading our Core Desire Yoga retreat. Our sessions started at 7:30 a.m. each morning and I was leading the morning yoga. If I wanted to move my body it meant an early wake up call. I hit the road at 6:30 a.m. and ran almost 4 miles with the sunrise. It was your typical beach run…humid and SO sweaty! Gotta love those flat roads though.

Later that day we did 1.5 hours of stand up paddle boarding. We did a long paddle into a headwind to get to our yoga spot and did a short class before paddling back. It was the most paddle boarding I’ve ever done at one time and pretty challenging!

Sunday

8 mile run

Since I committed last week to running a half in 47 days…I needed to get into long run mode ASAP! I was itching to do something active after our road trip back from Isle of Palms. I ran 6.5 miles with my fiance and I chatted his ear off about our weekend retreat and then ran another 1.5 on my own. We kept the pace slow (like 9:45-10) and I felt like I could have kept running forever. It was also 65 degrees, gray and drizzling and it felt amazing. It was a perfect long run!

(Edited to add…a 9:45-10 pace is slow for me NOW. I spent many, many years running slower. When I ran my first half marathon 10 years ago, my pace was 10:10. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve gotten significantly faster.)

Side note…follow me on Snap Chat for more quick looks and commentary on weekly workouts. You can find me @jendecurtins.

Tell me about your weekend workouts! Any fellow long runners? Anyone race?