Training Summary: 3/17 - 3/23

Mon: 9 miles
Tue: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 7.5 miles
Wed: 10 miles, including 3 sets of 500/300/200
Thu: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 7.5 miles
Fri: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 11 miles, including tempo workout
Sat: 7 miles
Sun: 15.5 miles
Total: 81 miles

This was my best week of training in quite a while. I put together a good combination of quality and quantity and felt good doing it. My achilles continues to be an issue, but it actually seems to be improving ever so slightly, and everything else is all systems go. After this week, I feel like I’m about as fit as I’ve been in some time, probably more so than at any point last year. Now I just have to continue to build on that, then start translating it into some good race times.

The week actually got off to a less than stellar start. First, snow on Monday morning forced me to skip doubling that day as I normally would have, then I had to pass on hill bursts on Tuesday so I could make it to a chiro appointment on time. I finally got on track, literally and figuratively, on Wednesday with a workout that consisted of 3 sets of 500/300/200 with 200 recovery. It was a bit breezy at times for running on the track and the splits were nothing to get excited about, but the average for everything added together was right at 5 min pace, which is a step in the right direction for me.

After a couple easy runs on Thursday, I decided to double on Friday to make up for not being able to on Monday. I usually don’t like to double on workout days because I feel like it sometimes prevents me from being able to run as fast in the afternoon session, but on this occasion it worked out well. My legs were indeed tired during the warm-up, but once we started the faster running I felt good and knocked out a 3-mile tempo at 5:45 pace with the first couple miles feeling really comfortable. After a 3 minute jog, I did a faster mile and hit 5:28, then followed that up with four 20-second strides at an average of 4:50 pace. Again, none of that is necessarily anything to get excited about, but it’s better than I’ve been able to do in a while and that’s encouraging, especially during what amounted to be a 15.5 mile day.

I felt surprisingly good running Saturday morning and figured then that it would probably catch up with me during the long run the next morning. I was right, and the 15.5 miles I logged with Andrew and Matthew on the Oriskany train bed on Sunday were a bit of a struggle, but I still averaged sub-7 minute pace for the run, which equates to something faster than that considering the terrain, and finished it with a couple solid miles in the 6:20’s at the end.

After struggling the first couple months of the year, the last six weeks have been really good and I’m on a fairly steep improvement curve right now as a result. That’s exciting, but I know I’ll level off sooner than later. I feel good about the direction things are going though, and I’m even starting to think about racing sometime soon. I need at least a couple more weeks of good training first though, and hopefully a workout or two during that time that indicates I’m ready to run faster than I have since 2009. Onward!