Mon: 9 miles
Tue: 7 miles
Wed: 0 – Off
Thu: 7.5 miles, including hill bursts and drills
Fri: 7.5 miles
Sat: 16 miles, including 2X20 min at marathon pace
Sun: 6 miles
Total: 53 miles
Coach Carl laid out a schedule for me for this past week, but at the same time told me to play it by ear, which is exactly what I wound up doing. The first three days were pretty much according to plan. I had had the option of doing a short, shakeout run or taking the day off altogether on Christmas Day, and based on how things went I went with the latter of the two choices. The next day was planned as a workout day (200’s on the track), but I was tired from all the festivities of the previous two days, so I decided to put it off until Friday.
When Friday rolled around, I saw the forecast for a deluge Sunday morning, so Andrew and I made a decision on the fly Friday evening to do our long run the next day instead of potentially swimming our way through it on Sunday (in hindsight, a very good call!). This happened to coincide with plans we’d already made to meet up with Andy Sayers who was in town from Iowa. Since we would be doing some quality work inside the long run, the 200’s that I’d postponed from the day before got scrapped altogether.
After some debate, the call was made to meet in Blacksburg for the long run/workout, so we headed down there Saturday morning and hit the Huckleberry Trail. After 45 min, that included a loop through the VA Tech campus, we began 2X20 min at Andrew’s marathon pace. My legs didn’t feel good in the miles leading up to the pushes, and between that and the hilly terrain, running sub-6:10 pace was nowhere near as easy as it should have been and it certainly wasn’t what I would call fun. I lapsed for a couples minutes about halfway through the second push before managing to pull myself together and finish it out on pace. While I would have liked to have felt better, it turned out to be a pretty solid run, especially considering the fact I haven’t done many runs over 13 miles the past couple months. For once in my life, I might actually be stronger in the speed category than the endurance category! At any rate, I finished the week out with a run in the rain (thankfully I was able to wait out the heaviest of it) Sunday morning, and my legs actually felt much better than I thought they would.
Coach Carl has given me almost the exact same schedule for this coming week as I had last week. In other words, it’s another fairly light week that includes the “play it by ear” asterisk. I do hope to get in a couple workouts this week with no days off. However, I’m still gathering myself up from overtraining and feeling really run down, and between that and all the activities that take place this time of year, I’m not going to push it. I want to be ready to ramp things up next week for the first full week of 2014. I’ve got lots of things I want to accomplish in the coming year, but my big goal at this point is the USATF Masters Outdoor National Championships in July, so I’ve got to strike the balance of running fast this spring while still being able to run well in the middle part of the year (and beyond). Should be fun! Happy New Year, all! May 2014 bless you with good health and lots of PR’s!
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