Mon - 7 miles easy + weights after
Tue - 9 miles w/ 10X100m strides + light weight workout after
Wed - 10 miles including 5/4/3/2/1 fartlek
Thu - 6 miles easy + weights after
Fri - 5 miles easy
Sat - 12 miles including 5 mile race
Sun - 14.5 miles with a strong finish (miles 13 & 14 in 6:30, 6:28; 3:11 last 1/2 mile)
Total: 63.5 miles
Ok, so much for a down week. I guess that could be considered good and bad. Good because I got in a solid week of work, felt good throughout, and still ran about what I expected to in the race, and bad because having a down week every now and then isn’t a bad thing, especially when it comes to injury prevention. For now I’m just gonna stay on it and monitor things closely. If I feel any need at all to back off I will. One good thing is I’ve reached a point where my mileage and intensity have pretty well stabilized and are where they need to be, so at least my body isn’t having to adjust to increases in the workload.
Anyway, much of this week has already been recapped in previous posts, so I’m not going to rehash the specifics. Instead, I’ll make a couple observations and leave it at that. Sticking to the theme of good and bad, the positive thing I’ve noticed is I’m starting to feel like I’m getting in better shape. I don’t necessarily have any data to show it; it’s just a feeling. When you’ve been at this as long as I have, you can tell when your body is responding well and when it’s struggling. Right now I feel like I’m responding well. There are multiple things that lead me to this conclusion, but a couple of them are the fact that I’m not as tired now as I was 2-3 weeks ago and there are times during runs where I feel like I could go harder if I wanted to. On the negative side, I really don’t have any speed whatsoever right now and I’m going to have to work on it over time. The workouts are showing it to me and the race reinforced it. I can run around 6 flat per mile all day long, which is great if my goal is a 50k. However, as soon as I get below about 5:40, I start to get uncomfortable quickly. When I get down into the 5:20’s, then I really start to work hard and struggle. I’ve got to get back to a point where I can run stuff at sub-5 pace and race in the 5:00-5:10 range. I’ve just got to remember that I’m only 3 weeks back into workouts and haven’t done any faster stuff for so long that it’s gonna take a while. Hopefully I’ll get there though, especially with the help of my speedy training partners.
Very solid week on tap for this one, including a tempo run tonight followed by a medium long run tomorrow. Coming off the past several days, I have a feeling I’m going to be a little dead-legged most of the time, but the goal for this week is just to get the work in. As I get stronger and more efficient, it’ll be easier to attack the speed element, which is definitely going to be a major area of emphasis. I’ll close with my motto for the rest of this year: It doesn’t get easier; it just gets faster!
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