July 18-24
Mon: AM - 3.5 miles; PM - 6 miles easy
Tue: AM - 4 miles; PM - 7 miles, incl 6 X 20/40 sec strides
Wed: AM - 4 miles; PM - 6 miles easy
Thu: 8 miles
Fri: AM - 4.5 miles; PM - 9.5 miles
Sat: 6 miles, incl 6 X 20/40 sec strides
Sun: 13.5 miles
Total: 72 miles
This post is going to be one of those “the good, the bad, and the ugly” deals. I’ll start with the good. This was actually the most miles I’ve run in a week since Aug 2014. Furthermore, at the end of the week, I was well in excess of 200 miles for the month of July, and I haven’t cracked 200 miles in a month since Sep of last year. I’m finally starting to build a little consistency and I’m actually starting to see some results accordingly. My average pace is coming down; I’m not struggling to finish runs; and I’m feeling better in general on a day-to-day basis.
Now for the bad. When looking through my log and realizing everything I just mentioned, it’s pretty easy to see why I’m so out of shape. I simply haven’t put in the work. As a result, it’s going to take a quite a while to get fit again. Basically I haven’t trained consistently since Aug 2014 when I hurt my hamstring. When you spend two years losing fitness, you don’t build it back overnight, especially when you’re in your 40’s. I’ve always been someone who thrives on higher mileage, and while I know I’ll never run 90-100 mile weeks again, I’ve certainly got to have more weeks in the 70 range than in the 30 range, and unfortunately the latter is more where I’ve been for far too long.
Ok, time for the ugly, which is plain and simple the weather. It appears we may wind up with 11 or 12 straight days with highs in the 90’s before we get a break, and even then the break simply means upper 80’s. It’s one thing to maintain fitness in weather like that but totally another to be trying to make gains. When the heat index is in the triple digits, it doesn’t much matter if you’re focusing on quality or quantity. Either one is going to be very difficult to achieve. I really need to be adding in some faster work right now, but I’m struggling just to run the miles. There were several days last week where I was really starting to overheat towards the end of runs and doing my longer run for the day in the morning isn’t really an option for me. As a result, I feel like about all I can do right now is put myself in a base phase and wait until the weather is more conducive to ramp up the quality. While this certainly isn’t going to help when it comes to my desire to start racing again in the very near future, it’s actually probably exactly what I need, so maybe in that respect it’s not such a bad thing.
I’ll conclude with some encouragement for all us Masters runners out there. If you haven’t already seen it, check out this story on Australian Olympic Marathoner, Scott Westcott. After narrowly qualifying for the Australian team several times since 2000, he finally made the team this year and will race in Rio just a little shy of his 41st birthday. With Bernard Lagat, who ran 13:14 this past weekend for 3rd place in the London Games, on the US 5k team, and Meb on the US Marathon Team, there will be quite a few of us “old” guys running in Rio, and I’m sure there are several more I don’t know about on both the men’s and women’s side. Age is just a number!
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