Training Summary: 4/14 - 4/20 and 4/21 - 4/27

April 14– 20
Mon: 8.5 miles
Tue: 7 miles
Wed: 9.5 miles, including 7X300 plus 3X100
Thu: 7 miles
Fri: 0 – Day Off
Sat: 7 miles, including strides
Sun: 16 miles
Total: 55 miles

April 21 – 27
Mon: AM – 8.5 miles; PM – 4 miles
Tue: AM – 8 miles, including strides; PM – 4 miles
Wed: 11.5 miles, including farltek
Thu: AM – 8 miles; PM – 4 miles
Fri: 11 miles, including progressive tempo plus 4X30 sec hard
Sat: 7 miles
Sun: 15 miles
Total: 81 miles

Finally catching up on training recaps for the past couple weeks, but I’m not going to go into a lot of detail since I’m covering two weeks instead of just one. Overall, training is going well and I’m feeling good. I think I’m in position to run as fast or faster than I have in the past several years. However, for that to happen, I’ll have to have some things fall into place, from training to motivation to opportunity. Hopefully all those things will come together and the next few months will be really good, but if not, I’m not going to stress about it. I’ve got lots going on right now at work and life in general, so all I can do is give it my best shot and see what happens.

Going back to the week of April 14-20, it was sort of a bust, although I somewhat made up for it with a good workout on Wed and a solid long run on Sun. Basically I came into the week tired from the 10k-race/long run combo over the weekend, and I never could seem to quite get on top my game. By the time Friday rolled around, I was pretty well fried and had a lot of things I had to get done, so I made the decision to take a day off to play catch up in multiple areas. It seemed to work, because I put in some good strides during the next morning's run then a good long run the day after that where I averaged 6:44 pace for 16 miles, closing it out with a 6:11.

This past week was probably the best week of training I’ve had this year, and that was in spite of the challenges associated with being on vacation. I got in an excellent mix of quality and quantity, hitting 81 miles with 2 really solid workouts and another good long run. It was one of those weeks I wish I could duplicate on a consistent basis, because I believe if I could I would get back to racing well. However, for one reason or another, many being totally unrelated to running, I never seem to be able to string together too many of those type of weeks in a row.

Ok, back to the grind and catching up on lots of things. Looking forward to May and hopefully some nice weather and a few good races! Happy running!