Mon: 7 miles
Tue: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 8.5 miles, including strides and drills
Wed: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 10 miles, including fartlek
Thu: 7 miles
Fri: AM – 4.5 miles, PM – 9.5 miles, including turnover work
Sat: 6.5 miles
Sun: 15 miles
Total: 77 miles
After a down week last week, partially by design and partially thanks to work related travel, this was a nice bounce-back week and a good start to fall training. I think 75-80 miles per week with a couple workouts will be my “sweet spot” for training over the next few months, so this was pretty much a model week. That’s the good news. The bad news is it was also a wake-up call as to just how far I’ve got to go to get my fitness level where I want it to be. At least I think I know what I need to do to get there.
I started the week with an easy run followed by a chiro visit to help straighten out my body after all the travel from the past two weeks. That was followed by a double the next day with strides and drills in the afternoon run. I was feeling pretty drained early in the week, but thankfully that started to turn around mid-week and I was able to put in a decent workout on Wednesday consisting of a fartlek of 8/6/4/2 min on with 3/3/2 min recovery. None of the intervals were all that fast, but I did manage to get faster as I went and also felt under control throughout.
I felt great on Thursday’s recovery run. It was a rare occasion where I was running 15-20 seconds per mile faster than it felt. Normally it’s the other way around. Friday was another double with a turnover workout in the afternoon. I did 10X1 minute with 90 seconds recovery, nothing fast, but at least getting some quicker work in. I had another pretty good recovery run on Saturday then a solid long run to finish out the week. Matthew and I headed over to the train bed in Oriskany for a 15 miler, and after the first three miles, everything was under 7 min pace, with a 6:42 average for the last 7, including a final mile of 6:23.
I hope to have a couple very similar weeks the next two weeks before taking a down week to finish up cycle one of my fall training. I believe I need to work on three things right now, so giving attention to those areas will be my focus. The first is functional strength. I think I’ve got a few weaknesses and imbalances in my hips and other areas that I need to address. This is limiting both my power and my running economy, and sometimes it almost feels like I’m sitting down when I run. I need to get on top of that or I’ll have trouble working on other things. I also need to work on my basic speed as well as my speed endurance. In other words, first, my turnover is not what it needs to be. I can’t run 100, 200, or 400 meters as fast as I need to be able to. Second, while I’m able to run 5:00-5:10 per mile, which is plenty fast enough for 5k/10k, I can’t hold it for long. That’s the speed endurance component. I’ve got the strength and aerobic capacity for tempo runs, long runs, and the like, but I’m lacking what I need when it comes to being able to run race pace. If I can get my form in order, improve my turnover, and increase my speed endurance, I should be in pretty good shape. That’s a tall order, though, so it’s definitely time to #DoWork!
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