Weekly Focus: Volume/Quality Mix
Mon: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 8.5 miles
Tue: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 8.5 miles
Wed: 10 miles, including fartlek (6X2 min)
Thu: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 8 miles
Fri: 10.5 miles, including Mono fartlek
Sat: 7 miles
Sun: 15 miles
Total: 81 miles
Coming off 95 miles last week, my highest week in over 4.5 years, the goal this week was to keep the mileage fairly high, but cut it back about 20% and add in some quality work. Having not done any workouts in the past three weeks, I wanted to keep the faster efforts fairly light and under control. As I’ve said before, my goal is to ease into this training scheme and gradually crank up the intensity as my body adapts. Overall it was a success and I feel like I had a good week. I’ll say this though: I’m not every fit right now when it comes to faster pace running and the heat/humidity does NOT help!
The first workout of the week was on Wednesday and it was HOT! I’d felt surprisingly good the night before in spite of the fact that, as one of my training partners said, it felt like your skin was on fire, but I didn’t feel as good for this one. The first of the 6X2 minute repeats went well, as I hit 5:30 pace and felt decent. The second effort was mostly uphill, however, and that’s when things started to go south. From there it was a struggle and basically just an attempt to survive. I wound up averaging just over 5:40 pace, though, so it wasn’t a bad workout all considered.
After an easy day on Thursday, I did a Mono Fartlek on Friday morning, which is 2X90 sec, 4X60 sec, 4X30 sec, and 4X15 sec, all with equal float recoveries. Because the recoveries are floats rather than jogs, this workout is basically a 20 min tempo run just broken up with lots of gear changing. I had a hard time getting into this run right from the start, and by midway through the fartlek my legs were pretty much done. I ended up covering 3.33 miles total in the 20 min, so right at 6 min average including the floats. I’d estimate something like a 5:30 average for the fast portions and 6:30 average for the floats, which is ok, but I forgot how hard this workout can be, especially when run on hilly terrain.
I wanted to run twice on Friday, but after the morning workout and working on my house all day, I simply didn’t have the energy. In fact, I was dragging a bit for most of the weekend, including the final run of the week on Sunday when Andrew and I did the Lee’s Gap loop. This is one of the tougher runs we do, as it has around 1,600’ of total elevation change with the first 8+ miles predominantly uphill. I didn’t feel bad, but I didn’t feel that good either and was definitely glad to be done.
I’m still debating what to do this coming week. To complete a 3 week cycle, I should drop the mileage another 20% and do a couple very solid workouts. However, I’m not sure my schedule and the weather is going to be conducive to track workouts. Furthermore, I’d like to align my new training schedule with some races, so I might jump back up and start a new cycle this week, putting me at my lowest mileage week at the end of this month when I could also test the waters in a race. At any rate, I’ve had a couple good weeks in a row now (really three with the exception of losing the end of one week to a blister), so that’s the good news. Just gotta stay on it and see if I can make some things happen.
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