Tuesdsay: Wanted to do a 3x3 tempo workout at 17:00 to 17:20 per 3 mile (on a treadmill, so more like running at sea level). However, the gym closed early and I realized that I only had enough time to do the exact workout with no time for warmup or cool down. I have come to realize that I run rather poorly at fast paces without a warmup, so the pace immediately felt extremely forced. I made it through the first repeat at 17:18, took my 2 minutes rest, and started up repeat 2, hoping to feel more relaxed, but didn't. Split 2 miles in 11:24, then got another .33 in before just really starting to feel extremely anaerobic. I could've made it through repeat 2 and a mile or 2 of repeat 3 if I had to, but I felt like I was going way past the intended effort, so I cut it off there to avoid killing myself and just jogged another 1.67 miles to cool down before leaving. I was a bit under the weather, so this probably also didn't help... 2 weeks ago I was able to handle this with splits of 17:28, 17:11, and 16:56 (if memory serves me correctly), but I had a good warmup that day. This will be important for me to keep in mind in the future.
Wednesday: Previous day's run was terrible, so I wanted something else of reasonable quality. My legs felt surprisingly good after taking the afternoon to ski and temperatures were quite cold at night, so I ended up just going moderately hard in my 10 mile (about marathon effort, but with a bit of hills mixed in) so that I could stay warm and still get something of quality in. Total time of 63:47 on the Center/89/1000N/Main/89/Center loop that is becoming somewhat standard. The pace felt fluid and never forced, which was a nice change from yesterday, 500' gain.
Thursday: 9 miles, 61:0x, treadmill. Bored to death, didn't feel that great. I'd felt slightly run down for the last couple days, so everything felt a little harder than it should've and I felt like I was sweating a massive amount. Meh.
Friday: 10 miles in Minnesota with Bill Mennell, a little slower than MP (65:33 on an undulating course with tons and tons of ice). First mile in 7:05, second mile in 6:50-ish and then faster from there, last mile in 5:49, but we had to cross a massive section of deep snow which halved the rate for about 30 seconds, so it was mostly at about 5:35 pace for the last mile. Felt really relaxed, even the last mile, due to being at sea level, which was awesome, 500' gain.
Saturday: Hilly 12 miles in MN, 1:19:42, my parents house to the red barn on Stillwater Road and back via the usual Mahtomedi/Stillwater route. First 6 pretty easy in 40:40, mile 7 in 6:02 (oops, got pretty carried away after the turn-around), intentionally slowed it back down on miles 8 and 9 (hilliest part of the run, mostly uphill) with 14:28, and then tempo'd miles 10-12 hard in 17:32, with mile 10 (about 40 feet net downhill) 5:52, mile 11 (20 feet net downhill) in 5:44, and mile 12 (60 feet net uphill) in 5:54 with more ice on mile 12 than most of the previous miles. Last mile was pretty hard with the uphill and the ice, but it was still relatively relaxed. I considered doing an afternoon 5k, but decided against it due to the ridiculous entry fee ($40), so I just closed today's run hard instead, 500' gain.
Sunday: 18 miles with 17.5 of it with Bill Mennell (then an extra .5 by myself to get up to an even mileage), 2:10:30 (7:15 pace, right on the money). I didn't realize this, but he hadn't run more than 10 miles in like 2 years, so I was surprised he hung on. Pretty even pacing on the 8.75 out, 8.75 back, with something like a 30 second negative split. Felt like a very easy pace, but I had about 50 calories during the run, so I was a little low energetically at the finish, but not bad (basically just enough that I wouldn't have wanted to speed up from the 7:15s we were doing, even though the pace felt slow). I actually brought 4 chocolates of 75-80 calories a piece, but Bill was hungry around mile 9, so I gave him 3 of them. When I pulled mine out to eat it around mile 13, it fell out of the package and the shell mostly shattered on the ground, so I only had a little over half of the chocolate (with plenty of extra dirt on it, yum...). Another unpleasantry involved sweating too much in the first half (wore too much clothing) and then freezing from all of the sweat in the 2nd half. Haha. Windchill of 3 degrees is cold! 1000' gain.
Total: 71 miles, 2500' gain. A good recovery week after working pretty hard in weeks 2 and 3 of the cycle. In hindsight, the 2nd half of the week wasn't really "recovery" style, but I just did what seemed comfortable and relatively easy, and it still ended up at 71, so I guess that's a good sign. I'm unlikely to be able to do much quality here in MN, so I'll likely just push the mileage up a bit this coming week. Ideally, this should be one of the highest mileage weeks of my training cycle.
Music for the week is Mestis - Te Mato. This just came out recently and features one of the guitarists from last week's band Tram.
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