Training Summary: 6/1 - 6/7

Mon - 7 miles easy + weights
Tue - 9 miles w/ 10X100m strides + light weight workout
Wed - 11 miles (progression run)
Thu - 6 miles easy + weights
Fri - 10 miles including fartlek workout
Sat - 6 miles easy w/ some on trails
Sun - 16 miles with a strong finish
Total: 65 miles

Another very solid week with no complaints, either physically or from a quality of training standpoint. I’m pretty much hitting on all cylinders right now, feeling good while doing it, and enjoying myself as well. It’s really nice for a change, since for so long I’ve been lucky to have just one of those three things happening much less all of them at once. I just hope I can keep it going.

As for the specifics of the week, I covered Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s workouts in my last post, so I’ll move on to Friday when Andrew and I warmed up 22 min then did three sets of the 42/22 workout, which is a fartlek of 4 min on, 2 min easy, 2 min on, 2 min easy, and repeat. For some odd reason we decided to do it on the Salem 10k course, so not exactly flat terrain. I was pretty pleased with the way it went. Andrew blasted me, especially on the downhill sections, but I ran better than I expected to. I spent a decent amount of time in the 5:30’s and even some in the 5:20’s or better (the last 2 minutes had a quarter in under 80), and we covered the 10k course in 39:10 with only 18 min of faster paced running. Not too shabby. I finished the week with a solid long run in Fincastle, again with Andrew. The 16 mile loop I did had 4,133’ of elevation change, which is hard to describe as anything other than ridiculous. For the first time in a long time, I took a gel during a run, downing one just over 70 min in. I think it actually helped the finish of the run. I was thinking about doing 4X1 min starting 90 min in but decided I didn’t have it in me. Instead, I decided to squeeze the pace down over the last couple miles and was able to hit mile 16 in 6:19 feeling strong. I’ll take it.

Anyway, the plan for this week is strides on Tuesday, a somewhat light workout on Wednesday, then a 5-mile race on Saturday. Mileage will be down a little from the past couple weeks, but I don’t intend on backing off a lot. I just want to freshen up my legs a little, not so much for the race as much as for injury prevention. This is a good time for a bit of a down week and a chance to bust some rust as well. Make no mistake about it though, I harbor not delusions of being able to race fast this weekend. I’m not there yet and have a long way to go before I’m even close. This is just another step in the process of accomplishing much bigger goals. Hope everyone has a great week!