Mon - 7 miles easy
Tue - 9 miles moderate
Wed - 10.5 miles steady
Thu - 7 miles easy in single digit wind chill
Fri - 10.5 miles steady, again in single digit wind chill
Sat - 6 miles easy (-6 over night and exactly 0 degrees during the run)
Sun - 14 miles steady
Total: 64 miles
Another pretty good week of training in the books. Once again I didn't do anything other than just log miles, but I got several signs that things are starting to come around. For one, the Garmin is showing me that my pace is getting faster while my average heart rate is getting lower, both positive trends. For another, I'm starting to get more comfortable with running at a reasonable pace and I'm also starting to feel strong at the end of my runs. In spite of the ridiculous weather, Friday's run turned into an unintentional mini-progression run as I got faster over each of the last 4 miles. My 10th mile that night was actually the fastest I've run since starting back, but I won't say what it was because it would be embarrassing. Sunday's long run went well too. Dave joined me for a trek through the hills of Botetourt (1,917 feet of elevation gain/loss), and we hit quite a few 6:30's and 40's over the course of the run. At 12 miles I felt so good that I just wanted to drop the hammer to the finish, but I'm trying to be smart and keep those sorts of urges under control, so I though better of it and finished out as planned.
This coming week I'm going to start making the transition back to doing some workouts. I've worked with Howard to lay out a two week plan with the idea of easing back into faster paced training. I don't want to do anything crazy yet, but it's been 4 weeks now since I started back running the week of Christmas, so it's about time to take the next step and see what happens. I put in 7 miles yesterday morning and ran most of the miles between 6:50 and 6:55. They all felt very relaxed, just like I was cruising on very little effort. That's the way it's supposed to be. Just a couple weeks ago I was struggling at 7:10-7:15 pace and wondering if I'd ever be able to run worth a hoot again, so it's nice to start feeling more like myself. I'm healthy too, with almost nothing in the way of aches/pains, although helping lay our new living room floor over the past couple days has my back pretty sore today. So far it hasn't bothered me while running though, so hopefully it won't turn into a problem. Being old stinks! Anyway, that's it for me. Hope everyone has a good week.
No comments:
Post a Comment