Mon - 7.5 miles
Tue - 9.5 miles (Stride Workout - 8X30 sec)
Wed - 11.5 miles (Medium Long Run)
Thu - 6.5 miles
Fri - 11 miles (Progression Run)
Sat - 6 miles
Sun - 15.5 miles (Long Run)
Total: 67.5 miles
For the current base-building phase I’m in, this was pretty much a perfect week of training. The best part of all is I finished it feeling better (and definitely fitter) than I did when I started. I’m at a point where I have no aches or pains outside of those associated with the normal daily rigors of training hard, and I’m excited about the direction things are headed. I’m getting back to the basics and the things that have always worked for me personally, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.
Tuesday was my first ever stride workout and I think I’m really going to like adding these to my routine. The key is to turn the legs over to stay in touch with speed while at the same time not going anaerobic and starting to accumulate lactic acid. As a result, you generally don’t go more than 30 seconds for the strides then take fairly long recoveries of 60-90 seconds. I wound up doing 8X30 sec with 60 sec recovery, and that seemed to work pretty well. They went much smoother, faster, and easier than expected, and having Andy (who was in the midst of a 17-miler) join me certainly helped. Wednesday was a good medium long run with Matthew and Andrew over the old Star City Half Marathon course. You can’t beat that route for building strength as it is constantly up and down with several long, significant climbs. We maintained a good, steady pace throughout for a nice, solid day. Friday was another progression run on the greenway with Andrew. We got moving faster than the week before right from the start and ended up working all the way down to 5:57 for the ninth mile. We eased out over the last two but still went through 10 in right around 65:30. I finished the week out with a solo 15.5-miler from my house. I didn’t realize the loop I did was as hilly as it was, but I wound up with 4,348 feet of total elevation change. I felt pretty good the entire way, and after a slow first couple miles, I got rolling and ended up with 6 miles in the 6:40’s and 4 faster than that, including a 6:16 for mile 15. It was a great way to wrap up the week.
Anyway, like I said, this past week was pretty much spot on, so I’ll be looking to do something very similar again this week. In fact, with the exception of adding a few miles and a down week here and there, I’d like to string together as many of these as possible over the course of this fall. I’ve definitely been trying to get back to workouts too quickly here recently and I’ve been missing the aerobic base required to run well, so this is what I need to do. Plus, looking back at some of my old logs, I’ve always thrived off this sort of training and actually even raced quite well off it, so it’s the perfect course of action for the time being. Hope everyone has a great week!
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