Mon: AM: 4 miles; PM: 8 miles, plus hill bursts
Tue: AM: 4.5 miles; PM: 8.5 miles, finishing with strides
Wed: 11 miles with the last 3 up-tempo
Thu: AM: 4.5 miles; PM: 8 miles
Fri: 6 miles
Sat: 11 miles, including 5k race
Sun: 14.5 miles
Total: 80 miles
I decided to uptick my mileage this week and things turned out pretty well. It was a good week overall, and I actually handled it better than I thought I might. This is more along the lines of what I would prefer my training look like going forward, so hopefully I’ll be able to keep the momentum going and start making some progress towards getting fitter and faster. I haven’t trained well since early March and the results of that have been evident, so it’s time to get back on the horse.
I started the week with a double, including some hill bursts in the afternoon run. The next day was pretty similar with strides towards the end instead of hill bursts. The end result was a couple of good mileage days with a little neuromuscular facilitation added in, which is a good combination. Wednesday I had hoped to run a workout, but the temp was above 90 and the sun shining bright, so I modified that plan, which turned out to be a good decision. I opted for a medium long run with a light progression towards the end, and that was all I could handle and then some. By midway through the run, I was definitely feeling the heat, and while I cut the pace down the last 4+ miles, it was anything but easy and my heart rate reflected a hard effort even though the pace didn’t so much. You have to acclimate to the heat and humidity, and this run was evidence of that fact.
In spite of doing my best to keep the effort under control and to rehydrate as best as possible, I felt the effects of Wednesday night’s effort for the next couple of days and still wasn’t feeling great when I warmed up for my race on Saturday. Once the race started, however, I got myself going and turned in one of my better efforts in a while, taking the win and the course record in a time of 16:29. The course itself was fast, with rolling hills in the first mile then lots of gradual downhill thereafter, but I was still pleased to run the time I did and I took it as a step in the right direction. I certainly have a lot of work to do before I can consistently run this sort of time and faster, which is ultimately what I hope to do, but I was beginning to wonder if I could even still turn my legs over at sub-5:20 pace for 3.1 miles without them falling apart or exploding, and this was proof I can.
I concluded the week with a long run in the hills of Fincastle and felt surprisingly good. My legs started to feel it towards the end, but I kept waiting for things to get bad and they never really did. It was actually my longest run in the last 10 weeks and a good cap to my highest mileage week since I ran 81 the first week of March.
So, like I said at the start of this post, this was a good week and hopefully a model for what my training will look like going forward. I’ve never been able to run well without covering all my bases, and that’s what I’ve got to get back to doing. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good March, April, and May, so now I’m a bit behind where I could otherwise be and have to deal with the summer weather on top of that. However, there’s no need to worry about what’s in the past and I’m certainly not in panic mode. All I can do is look forward and move on. I’ve got to remember what I made my motto for this year and beyond: Nothing comes easy, so do what it takes.
No comments:
Post a Comment