Training Summary: 1/7 - 1/13

Mon: 7 miles
Tue: 8 miles, including strides
Wed: 10 miles, including combo workout
Thu: 7 miles
Fri: 9.5 miles, including turnover work
Sat: 6 miles
Sun: 16.5 miles, including 7 at marathon pace
Total: 64 miles

This was a decent week all considered, but it was hampered by fighting off being sick for the majority of it. Fortunately I never felt terrible, but whatever I had definitely left me feeling tired and run down. As a result, I had to forgo a few miles in favor of getting some extra rest, and the quality of my workouts wasn’t quite as good as it otherwise would have been either. That’s just the way it goes sometimes, and one of the lessons I’ve learned over time is you have to be flexible enough to adjust accordingly.

I first starting feeling sick on Monday, and by time for the stride workout Tuesday evening, I had a good bit of congestion, and running at a faster pace wasn’t exactly easy. I managed to pull it off, however, and by Wednesday I felt good enough to go through with the planned workout. That workout consisted of 4X400 with 200 recovery on the track, 1X2 miles at tempo effort on the roads, then 4X200 with 200 recovery back on the track. I had to back out of the 400’s early and none of my splits were what I was hoping for, but at the same time I was closer to goal pace than I thought I might be, so I considered it a win just to finish the workout at a decent effort.

After an easy day on Thursday, Friday was just a little turnover work consisting of 4X30 sec, 4X60 sec, 4X30 sec, all with 60 sec recovery. By this point in the week, I was really feeling worn down, so I just did what I could, and in the end it didn’t go that bad. I was at least able to stretch my legs out a little and flush the junk out of them, which was the goal.

Sunday was the big effort of the week, and I admit that I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle it or not. After 50 min of running, Andrew and I embarked on some marathon pace work. My goal was to hang for 30-40 min of it while he carried on for 50-60 depending on how he was feeling. After a somewhat rough feeling first mile, I found some rhythm and started to feel fairly good. I wound up making it to 7 miles at an average of just under 6:10, which I was pleased with. I probably could have done more, but I decided not to push it. I felt decent in the cooldown, which I completed at sub-6:40 pace, and felt pretty good afterward as well, so it was a good, solid run on what was a great weather morning. Both runs on the weekend were done in short sleeves, and I’ll take every day like that in January I can get.

Andrew has two more weeks to go until his marathon, so my plan is to continue to help him with his preparation during that time then switch gears thereafter. After my downtime in November, I’ve basically spent the last six weeks doing marathon training, which has been good from a perspective of building strength and helping me get my legs fully under me but bad from a standpoint of preparing me for the events I’ll be racing this coming spring. I think I’m in pretty good position right now though, as the strength is there and I’m feeling healthy as well, so hopefully as I start to add in workouts more specific to the 5k/10k distance I’ll see some nice progress. Have a good week, all. Run happy and run fast!