Week of 5-24-09

I decided to do a reasonable mileage push from Sunday through Saturday rather than Monday through Sunday, so that's how I'm going to count my 7-days of running last week.

Sunday 5-24-09: 35 miles, as described previously

Monday 5-25-09: 12 miles, nice recovery run at Afton state park, stuck to just the easy trails, not fast, but not as slow as I thought it would be, average per mile pace was somewhere in the range 7:00-7:10.

Tuesday 5-26-09: 8 miles, 3 miles tempo, 2 miles on track (wanted to do 3, but got kicked out after 2 due to some lacrosse game being played on the field), 3 miles cooldown home, track work consisted of 1600, 800, 800, (was supposed to be 16,8,8,16) with 3 and then 2 minutes rest. All laps were about 2 seconds slow because I had to run out to lane 6 and back to avoid a bunch of bags and a car (yes, a car) parked on the track in the final 100 meters of every loop. However, I still ran these pretty darn fast (5:06,2:26, 2:28), so they actually would've been around 4:58, 2:22, 2:24 without said obstructions. I had enough left to do one more mile at about the pace of the first mile, but that would've been about it since this was a pretty fast workout.

Wednesday 5-27-09: 10 miles, around 6/mile, picking up the pace for 1 mile in the middle along a hilly dirt road @5:41 (an old mile repeat course that I ran in high school), whole run consisted of a big Kathryn Abbot loop, the OHA loop, warner to stillwater road, that to jamaca, jamaca to the dirt road (whose name I can't remember), some fooling around on backroads in old-school mahtomedi, and eventually back home through KA park, overall, pace felt a little more strenuous than I wanted it to, legs were slightly beat up

Thursday 5-28-09: 22 miles: Loop through kathryn abbot park, to the gateway state trail, all the way to the end, a tiny extra loop in pine point park at the end, back along the trail, through KA park again. This run was very miserable... Mentally I wasn't there, it was really hot and humid, and I felt really low on energy and only had Sport Beans with me, which I realized are just sugar more than anything, so they're not at all good for long-term energy for endurance type stuff. I started off reasonably well, doing the first half in about 7 minutes a mile like I wanted to run the whole thing in, but I was so exhausted that I walked a couple miles near the end, rounding it out to just a hair under 8 minutes a mile when all was said and done.

Friday 5-29-09: 9 miles: Tempo, around 5:50s, through KA park, around OHA elementary trail, through old-school Mahtomedi, and back up along White Bear Lake.

Saturday 5-30-09: 21 miles: Long run in Afton, about 7 minutes a mile average. Started out on the toughest trails, going really fast for that long of a run, under 6:30s, but backed it off significantly at around the halfway point, opting to just have some fun in the 2nd half with a pace around 7:30s for an average of 7s or so. Sport Beans once again proved to do nothing more than give me a sugary burst, but I had hammer gel for backup and that worked well for me. I forgot to bring water and it was quite hot, so I was only able to get water at a couple points in the run and I felt relatively dehydrated, but not terribly bad.

Weekly total: 117 miles. Surprisingly, this felt really good. Thursday's run was a bit of a flop, but other than that, I felt reasonably good all week and managed to recover from Sunday's marathon extremely fast while still averaging 10 miles/day over the next 3 days. My legs aren't sore whatsoever, and that's an extremely good sign. I did a push for 111 miles in 7 days in late May 2008 since I realized I wasn't in very good shape and had to do a big ultra soon after, and it absolutely beat the living crap out of my feet and legs, basically crippling me for a few days afterwards. The fact that I can do 117 miles in 7 days right now in late May 2009 and still feel great afterwards, (especially with day 1 being a marathon PR plus extra mileage and the next few days being somewhat of recovery) means that my endurance is getting a lot better and my legs are way stronger.

Sunday 5-31-09: Rest. I didn't necessarily need a day off, but I felt that I had no reason to go out and do heavy mileage. I have to race one more marathon in the near future (Bear Lake Marathon, 2 weeks from now) to get my spot in the St George Marathon this October and I have to win the stupid thing to get my spot, so this is a pretty important race and I have to make sure that I don't jeapardize my ability to perform at 100%.

Week of 6-1-09 plans: Reasonably big, but nothing like last week. I'll have 1 speed workout, 2 if I'm feeling REALLY good.

The 3-month summer season officially starts today on my eTRaXC.com training log. In both summer 2007 and winter 2008-2009 (december through february), my 2 heaviest base sessions, I came very close to running 1000 miles in 3 months (breaking 980 in summer 07 and being something close to that in winter 08-09), but didn't quite do it. This June-August, my goal is to easily exceed that number. In fact, if I want to run my fall marathon exceptionally well, I think 1100 miles would be a good number to shoot for. Ideally, I want to be pegging 90+ per week, but more consistently and without much off time since I won't be racing much. At this point, my racing plans are just Bear Lake in 2 weeks and Cascade Crest 100 at the end of August, probably also running the Mt Disappointment 50 (an extremely tough 50 miler in SoCal) in early August as a warmup for CC100. My goal with Bear Lake is to win without any specific time goals. Last year's winner was 3:07 and they have fewer registered runners for this year's, so I'm hoping to be able to win without setting my training back. The course is easy, but almost nobody does it, so there isn't much competition. Cascade Crest is something that I'm somewhat regretting at this point because it probably won't benefit my Fall marathon that much, which is my entire focus right now, but at least it will force me to have an extremely high amount of base mileage, which will itself help significantly for the marathon.