Training Summary: 4/29 - 5/5

Mon: 7.5 miles
Tue: 8.5 miles
Wed: 10.5 miles, including combo workout
Thu: 7 miles
Fri: 6 miles
Sat: 11.5 miles, including race
Sun: 13.5 miles
Total: 64.5 miles

This week didn’t go exactly according to plan in several different ways, but it was another step in the right direction. I had hoped to do Wednesday’s workout on Tuesday then do some 200’s on Thursday, which would have given me three quality efforts on the week. However, the way things worked out I had to settle for just the one workout on Wednesday plus the race on Saturday. Still, both those were good, solid efforts, and I got my mileage up some as well, so like I said, it was a positive week overall.

Since I already recapped the Wednesday workout in my previous post and probably won’t do a post regarding the race, I’ll discuss that in this post. I headed over to the HLHPTA 5k in Vinton for a first year race being held to raise funds for a digital sign for the elementary school. I won’t go into a lot of detail, but the course turned out to be multiple loops all on the school grounds. It also turned out to be significantly long according to my Garmin, which registered 3.47 miles. Additionally, it was quite cool that morning, to the extent that I even had to wear a long sleeve shirt. Those were the negatives I guess you could say. On the positive side, I took the overall win and got in a good workout. I managed to get my 5k split, which was 17:12 off splits of 5:25, 5:39, 5:35, :32 (for the last .10). Considering the course wasn’t totally flat, it was a solo effort in which I wore trainers instead of racing flats, and I had to weave in and out of people as I was lapping them, I feel like it was a decent effort and probably worth a sub-17 5k in different circumstances, although I try to not play guessing games after races because you run what you run on that day and that’s that. As an added bonus, the prize for first overall was a round of golf plus cart fee at the Hanging Rock Golf Course. It’s too bad I don’t play, but that’s a pretty nice prize that I’ll either pass along to someone I know or use myself just for kicks.

I concluded the week with a trip to Covington, VA, with Andrew to check out the Jackson River Scenic Trail, a newly renovated rail trail. Let me just say that this is an awesome place to run that I hope to make it to on a semi-consistent basis going forward. It runs alongside the Jackson River and is almost entirely shaded. That actually made it a touch chilly at times yesterday but will be great come this summer when it’s really hot. We did just over 6.5 miles out before turning around and coming back, and we didn’t make it all the way to the end. From what I can tell looking at the map, it’s probably around 7.5 miles long with future plans for about that much more as an extension. It’s definitely a nice resource for the area. As for the run itself, I felt pretty sluggish early, but once we got going I was able to settle in well enough, averaging 6:46 pace for the second half, and it was a good reintroduction to long runs since I hadn’t done one in four weeks.

So, I’m still not back where I was in late-February and early March, but after a big slump in my training for around six weeks in a row, I’ve now put together two positive weeks in a row. I hope to continue to build that momentum over the next two weeks before I’ll have a couple rough ones due to travel. Then I sincerely hope it will be game on!