Training Summary: 8/20 - 8/26

Mon: 7 miles, drills after
Tue: 8 miles, including hill bursts
Wed: 10.5 miles, including mile, 2-mile, mile
Thu: 6 miles, light drills after
Fri: 10 miles, including turnover work
Sat: 6 miles
Sun: 17 miles, including 2X20 min at marathon pace
Total: 64.5 miles

This was a very good week of training. In fact, I’ll go so far as to call it a model week for going forward. I covered all my bases with the type of work I did, but I focused on the workout days and recovering properly between them and didn’t really worry about anything else. I also did most, although not quite all, of the ancillary work I needed to do, and I didn’t stress out about the pace/splits on any run or workout. I simply put out the proper effort for each day and told myself that everything else would take care of itself over time. My easy days were a little shorter than has been usual for me, and just as important, they were truly slow and easy. In the past, I would have run a good 3-4 more miles total on the week, and the easy days would have probably averaged close to 20 sec per mile faster. That might not seem like a whole lot of difference, but it was enough that I definitely noticed it over the course of the week. My mileage total and overall pace might have looked better in my log doing things like I was, but that wasn’t getting me the results I wanted on race day, whereas I feel like if I can do what I did this week consistently, I’ll finally see some improvement.

Wednesday’s workout consisted of a 3 mile warm-up that included 2X100 and 1X200 meter strides, something I hope to do more consistently before workouts going forward, then one times a mile on the track, one times two miles on the roads, and finally one more mile back on the track. The first mile went fairly well, as did the first mile of the two mile, but after that I struggled, as has been typical in both workouts and races when running a pace in the 5:30’s or better. The second half of the workout was pretty ugly, but I got my heart rate up to 189, so I was definitely doing some work, and rather than beat myself up like I have in the past, I was actually pleased with how hard I’d run and looked at it as a step in the right direction.

Friday’s workout was geared towards leg turnover, which is a real weakness of mine, probably my greatest weakness as a matter of fact. It consisted of 2X100, 2X200, 2X400, 1X800, 2X400, 2X200, 2X100. I would have liked to have run 1-2 seconds faster than I did on the 400’s and about 5 seconds faster on the 800, but everything else was pretty much in line with my goals. Considering my legs were still a little tired from Wednesday, it was fairly hot out, and for a long time now I’ve been completely inept at this sort of work, I’ll take the results I got. As with Wednesday, it was another step in the right direction.

Sunday was the big workout of the week, a marathon oriented session. Andrew and I headed over to the rail trail in Oriskany and caught a pretty good morning for a run, humid, but overcast with a little light rain here and there. After an hour of steady running, we did 2X20 min at marathon pace with 5 minutes recovery between, averaging right around 6:05 pace. I struggled a bit the last 5 minutes of the second push, but to my credit, that part was slightly uphill, and otherwise I felt pretty solid throughout. We cooled down with an easy mile and a half and got in 17 on the day.

So, I can take numerous positives out of this week, and since one of my goals is to be more optimistic and focus on the good rather than the bad, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. However, this week did serve to confirm that I am greatly lacking in the ability to run faster paces. I’m plenty strong, but I haven’t been able to convert that strength to speed. As much as I really hate to admit this, I think my recent race results have been a good reflection of my training and my fitness level. Hot weather and slow courses may have impacted my times a little, but overall I’m just not that fit. I’ve overemphasized some things in training and completely neglected others (in other words, I haven’t been thorough or smart), and when you add that with inconsistency due to injury and a runner who is no longer in his prime, you get what you get. There’s nothing I can do about that and it may even be too late to completely correct it, but all I can do is try, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.