Tue - 7 miles from Hanging Rock, drills after
Wed - 8.5 miles from the Ramada w/each mile split faster, ending w/ a 6:45
Thu - 5.5 miles easy in Salem, drills after
Fri - 8.5 miles in Salem including a 2-mile "tempo"
Sat - 5 miles easy on the trails at Greenfield, drills after
Sun - 11 miles in Fincastle (hilly)
Total: 52 miles
At 52 miles, this past week was my highest total since starting back. It was also my best week both in terms of how I felt and in terms of the quality of the work, as it contained 3 days of doing drills, a 2-mile “tempo run,” and an 11 mile “long” run, which was my farthest distance of the comeback. Altogether I’m pretty pleased and feel like I finally have some positive momentum building.
In terms of the details, I did drills at the end of my runs on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. They were pretty light, but went better than expected. I do think I tweaked my hip doing karaoke on Thursday and the Frankensteins were putting a little strain on my hamstrings, so I decided to cut those out for a while going forward. That leaves me with high knees, bounding, butt kicks, and backwards running, and I’ll probably add in another one or two this week. I’m doing about 75 meters worth of each drill and just one set for now. I’ll progress with it as my body allows. Friday was the real test of the week and called for a 4 mile w-up followed by 2 miles on the track up-tempo and a 2.5 mile c-down. My goal was to run around 6:15 pace, but I felt pretty dead-legged in the w-up and wasn’t even sure that would happen. However, once we got started, it went much better than expected. Andrew led the way and I just sort of maintained a set distance behind him (until he blasted the last lap). I wound up putting both miles under 6 min and really felt pretty under control. I couldn’t have run a lot faster, but at the same time, I think I could have maintained what I was doing for at least another mile. I finished the week with a fairly hilly 11 mile run in Fincastle with lots of miles in the low-7’s, which was solid and an improvement over the previous week’s long effort. Thanks to Andrew and Matthew for keeping me company throughout the week! It made things much easier, as I only had one day (Saturday) where I had to run on my own.
This week will be pretty similar both in terms of overall mileage and quality. I hope to get in another tempo-type run and maybe a day with something a little shorter and faster as well. One major goal for the week will be to develop a plan for the next month or so. Making up stuff from day-to-day and week-to-week rarely works very well, and I feel like things are holding up well enough on the injury/aches/pains front that I can finally start some actual planning. I know I have to stay on the conservative side but still look forward to having a plan in place and more structure/purpose to my training.
I'll conclude with a shout out to David Angell, who busted out a 52:13 PR to win the Capitol Ten Miler in Richmond this past Saturday. In the process, he defeated a very accomplished runner in Guy Alton and also won the RRCA Eastern Region Championship (and a Garmin to boot). Nice work!
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