Training Summary: 11/26 - 12/2

Mon: 6 miles
Tue: 7 miles, including hill bursts
Wed: 11 miles, including 3X10 min at marathon pace
Thu: 0 – Day Off
Fri: 0 – Day Off
Sat: 0 – Day Off
Sun: 0 – Day Off
Total: 24 miles

And with that, my two weeks of down time is over and it’s time to begin prep for 2013. I wound up running 7 of the last 14 days, and while my schedule probably wasn’t optimal, I think I accomplished what I needed to. Overall, I’m feeling good, and most importantly, my desire to train is back. In fact, I’m very much looking forward to getting back on a normal schedule this week.

As for the week that was, obviously there’s not much to report. I got in a few hill bursts on Tuesday then accompanied Andrew for his 3X10 min at marathon pace with 2 min recoveries on Wednesday. I actually hadn’t planned on doing all three intervals of that workout, but I was feeling good and just went with it. We actually wound up averaging 6:01 and 5:59 for the last two according to my Garmin, so they were a touch faster than I expected as well. Faster yet easier is always a good thing, and I’d like to have lots of those type of days going forward! The rest of the week wound up being off, somewhat by design and somewhat out of me getting busy with various things and just not making the time to run based on knowing it was my downtime.

I’ll spend this week easing back into things. I feel like I’m in good position at the moment and I’m excited to get back to work. The downtime the past two weeks, and actually it was a little longer than that really, refreshed me both physically and mentally, but I believe I ran enough during the time period that it won’t take me long to get back on top my game and ready to make progress with my fitness. The key now is to improve upon the way I’ve done things in the past so as to optimize my training. I had a decent year in 2012, but I didn’t get the results I was looking for and I burned myself out a bit in the process. Going forward, I’m going to pay much closer attention to making sure I get the type of work I need to in order to get race fit while also getting enough recovery to let my body absorb that work. I’ve begun to formulate the plan, now it’s time to EXECUTE! 2013, here I come!