Mon: AM - 4 miles; PM - 7 miles
Tue: AM - 4.5 miles; PM - 8.5 miles, including strides
Wed: 10.5 miles, including 1/2/3/4/3/2/1 min fartlek (5:30’s avg)
Thu: AM - 4 miles; PM - 6.5 miles
Fri: 10 miles including, 2X10 min tempo intervals (5:50’s avg)
Sat: 7 miles
Sun: 16 miles
Total: 78 miles
This was another pretty good week spent getting my training back up to full volume and normal intensity. The past two weeks have been a model of what I want my training to look like for the foreseeable future, and I already feel like I’m making progress, even though at times it doesn’t necessarily feel like it with Friday’s sub-par workout being an example. I’m confident I’m on the right track, however, so I just have to be patient and let the process bring the fitness around.
Getting down to the specifics of the week that was, after a couple standard two-a-days on Monday and Tuesday with some strides at the end of Tuesday evening’s run, I did a ladder-style fartlek of 1/2/3/4/3/2/1 min on with 2 min recoveries on Wednesday with Sam. On paper this shouldn’t have been that hard of a workout, but it was deceptively hot that evening and by the end we were both feeling the effects. I would have liked to have been faster (paces ranged from around 5:10 to around 5:40 for an average in the 5:30’s), but it was one of those days where I just had to stay under control and do what I could do.
I had a very rough recovery day on Thursday, and that was followed by an ugly workout on Friday. I felt bad enough right from the start that I thought about skipping this workout, but I’ve done too much of that this year and my fitness has paid the price as a result, so I pushed through the scheduled 2X10 min at tempo effort with 3 min recovery. The result was a bit ugly, but the overall pace of the run was decent at 6:44 and at least I got some work done.
I didn’t feel too bad on Saturday, but Sunday was a different story. Andrew, Matthew, and I headed down to Covington to do our long run on the Jackson River Trail, and we were greeted by warm, extremely muggy conditions. Between the humidity and the slower surface of the trail, the effort we were putting out was definitely greater than the pace it was generating. While we never got all that fast (most of the second half was in the 6:50’s with a 6:27 thrown in for mile 15), I was pretty well spent after it was over and could tell I’d done some work.
After four weeks of what was probably over-training, followed by four weeks of poor training while I tried to recover, I’ve now put in two weeks that I think have been pretty much spot on. My fitness isn’t as good as I’d like it to be thanks to that poor stretch where I actually missed 7 out of 21 days, but if I can get consistent with weeks like the past two, hopefully I’ll get there sooner than later. Hard to believe it’s already September. Time to salvage the last third of this year!
2 comments:
I know this will sound crazy, especially coming from me, but I wonder if you've considered a slow 20 miler about once every 2 weeks, say, at 8 to 8:15 pace? I've been reading quite a bit about mitochondrial development and the benefits of this relatively "easy" workout.
One of the hardest runs I ever did was a 22 miler at a slow pace. I was sore for days after that. In comparison, I've run 20 at a low-6 minute pace and been way less sore. Not sure what that means, but after that one experience I swore I'd never slog along for long periods of time ever again. Perhaps I should rethink that philosophy, who knows.
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