Mon: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 9 miles
Tue: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 8 miles plus hill bursts
Wed: 10.5 miles, including fartlek
Thu: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 7.5 miles
Fri: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 11 miles, including fartlek
Sat: 7 miles
Sun: 16 miles
Total: 87 miles
Another good week of training in the books. The quality wasn’t quite as good this week as the week before, partially thanks to the weather and partially thanks to my achilles still not being quite where I need it to be, but what I lacked in quality I made up for in volume, as this was my highest mileage week in quite some time. Also, it wasn’t like the quality was bad. I didn’t get on the track this week, but the two fartleks I did on the road were both pretty solid.
Tuesday was round one of winter weather for the week, but I still managed to get both my runs done for the day. That was followed by a cold, windy day on Wednesday, where I abandoned the track workout on the schedule for a fartlek consisting of 5/4/3/2/1 min on with 3/2/2/2 recovery. I averaged 5:29 pace for the faster parts, which probably wasn’t too bad considering the weather, but I was actually a little disappointed, as I was hoping to hit closer to 5:20. In the end I took it as a good sign that I can have a workout where I run faster than a lot of other my recent workouts but be disappointed not to run better. That’s a sign that I’m turning a corner both physically and mentally.
After an easy double on Thursday, I doubled again Friday with an afternoon workout. The workout was supposed to be tempo quarters on the track, but with my achilles not really liking turns right now, I decided to do a fartlek on the road instead. I wound up doing 12X90 sec with 60 sec recovery and averaged 5:34 pace. I followed that up with 4X20 sec strides where I averaged just over 4:50 pace. My form was going away a little towards the end, but overall it was a good workout. Two weeks ago I ran a similar fartlek (8X2 min) on the same course and averaged 5:46 pace, so this was quite a bit faster.
I finished the week with an easy day in a light rain on Saturday then a long run in some ridiculous weather on Sunday. The wind was so bad that I was literally stood up on several occasions and also blown side-to-side multiple times. Factor in the snow coming at me sideways, and it was just nasty. However, in spite of that and 1,680’ of elevation gain, I averaged 6:44 pace for the last 14 miles, with the last 4 all well under that, and got in 16 miles total. It was a good cap to the week.
This coming week will likely be more of the same. I need to do a little faster work, but I’m sort of afraid to with my achilles feeling like it does currently. I’ve actually seen a little improvement over the past few days, so hopefully I’ve got things headed in the right direction. If so, everything else definitely seems to be coming along well, so I think I can make some good progress soon. Here’s to better weather and fast running!
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