Mon: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 8.5 miles
Tue: 7.5 miles, including hill bursts
Wed: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 8.5 miles
Thu: AM – 4 miles; PM – 9.5 miles, including mile repeats
Fri: 9.5 miles
Sat: 6.5 miles, including strides
Sun: 14 miles
Total: 77 miles
For the first time in 2014, I was finally able to put together back-to-back good weeks of training. This year has definitely been a struggle so far, but things are finally looking up. Furthermore, I’m actually starting to feel good again. I’ve been battling low energy and tired, heavy legs for what seems like forever now, and that seems to be turning around as well. I’ve got a lot of work to do for sure, but at least things are looking up.
The plan for this past week was mainly base mileage with a couple light workouts and some ancillary things like drills, strides, etc. to wake my legs up a bit. In what has been a rarity for me lately, things pretty much went exactly according to plan. I got good mileage most every day, knocked out three doubles, and got my drills, hill bursts, and strides done too. The only workout of substance was 3X1 mile on the track on Thursday. With only 90 seconds recovery between each repeat, this was more of a tempo/cruise-miles workout than anything else, which is exactly what I needed. My splits were slow enough that I won’t divulge that data, but the important thing is I got the workout done and felt relatively comfortable doing it. Overall it went better than expected.
One thing I noticed this week is my average pace is getting faster while my average heart rate is coming down. While I don’t have workouts or races at this point to indicate my fitness, that’s a good sign that I’m making progress. I’m still battling my right achilles a bit, as it’s been flared up more than usual for 2-3 weeks now, but I’m hoping I have a strategy to get that under control. More details to come if it works.
This coming week will be another week of base mileage before I cut back for a week then move to normal, full-scale training. After 71 and 77 miles the past two weeks, I’m hoping to hit 80 this week. Like I said earlier, I definitely feel like things are headed in the right direction. If I can get another good week of base and also get my achilles settled down, I think I can make some real progress. At this point I’m just basing it on a gut feeling rather than any hard data and it’s definitely going to be a process that will take a while, but I think I've got a good shot at running as well as I have in a long time before all is said and done. Onward!
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