Weekly Focus: Quality (Cutback Week)
Mon: 8 miles
Tue: AM – 4 miles; PM – 8 miles
Wed: 10 miles, including fartlek
Thu: AM – 4 miles; PM – 7 miles
Fri: 10 miles, including combo workout
Sat: 6 miles
Sun: 13 miles
Total: 70 miles
This was week three of my three week training cycle and therefore a scheduled cutback week, and overall it was a really good week. As sometimes seems to happen when you’re running higher mileage then back off, I felt a little sluggish at various times throughout the week, but that was countered with two of the better workouts I’ve had all year, so no complaints. I know in the past I’ve often felt worse in cutback weeks than up weeks, making it tempting to just keep hammering away, but I’ve learned that lesson the hard way many times and won’t be making that mistake again. The cool thing about having run weeks of 95, 81, 100, and 87 leading up to this is doing just 70 miles for the week seemed very easy from a mental standpoint. In fact, there were several times where I literally thought “that’s all I have to run today?!”
After relatively easy days on Mon and Tue, I ran a fartlek on Wed consisting of 5/4/3/2/1 min on with 2 min recoveries. This is a staple workout of mine and I feel it allows you to get some good work done without being overly challenging, and something not overly challenging was definitely what I needed Wed since it was 92 degrees that afternoon. I actually debated not running hard based on just how hot it was, but I decided to go through with it and just keep the effort under control. As is, I was very pleasantly surprised to start out in the 5:30’s and finish at 5:14 pace then be able to do my cooldown at 6:40 pace feeling pretty comfortable aside from being a little overheated. This workout was nothing to get excited about, but it definitely gave me a little confidence that my fitness is improving.
Thursday was an easy double followed by another workout on Friday. This workout was what I call a combo workout, meaning it had some tempo pace work as well as some faster stuff. The first segment was a 15 min tempo that I planned on running in the 5:50’s, possibly even starting around 6:00-6:05, but that plan quickly went out the window when I hit the first mile in 5:40 then the second in 5:39. Needless to say, the tempo was faster than planned. That was followed by a 5 min breakdown, which is 2:00, 1:30, 1:00, and :30, with equal recovery. Those went well, starting at 5:20 pace and getting well under by the end. I actually had a point during this workout where I realized I could handle this pace and didn’t need to be afraid of blowing up. That allowed me to run a little more aggressively at the end and turn this into a really solid day.
The week concluded with an easy day on Sat and an exceptionally hilly 13 miler on Sun. I finally relented to Andrew’s request to run a certain loop in Fincastle that I knew was really tough, and as we climbed pretty much steadily from 6 to 9 miles, I think we both realized why I’d been hesitant to do this loop. Garmin Connect showed over 2,100’ of total elevation change in just 13 miles, and I’m glad this was a down week and I didn’t have any more than that. I’ll file this loop away for a while, because although it’s a great strength builder, it just beats you up too much.
This coming week will be back up to the highest mileage of my three week cycle, and as such I’ll be shooting for triple digits again. I’ve still got a ways to go before I’ll be where I want to be to race, but this week I started to get some indication that the training I’ve been doing over the past 4+ weeks is working. I’m still feeling pretty solid and seem to be handling it well, so I’m excited to go start the second full cycle of this training scheme and see how my body responds. Hopefully I’m on the right track and will be able to do some good things this fall. Onward!
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