Sunday, January 18, 2009

1/18/2009

This week was a bit tough because of the weather - it was really cold (most mornings were below zero with the coldest being -14F) and we got almost a foot of snow. Since I am getting soft and less brazen in my old age I opted to run inside on the treadmill 4 or 5 times. On Wednesday I did my first steady-state run, although it was only 4 miles, and I did a quick run on Friday just to bring the average pace for the week down a bit. The other days were all pretty relaxed, starting out at 7:30-7:45 pace and working down to anywhere between 6:30-7:15 pace, depending on how I felt and the incline on the treadmill. Good week overall.

Monday: 8 mi (57:39) - easy
Tuesday: 8 mi (58:56) - easy
Wednesday: 9 mi (59:51) - 3 mile warm up, 4 mile steady-state/tempo run in 23:40 (averaged 5:55/mi) and 2 mile cool down. Felt pretty easy at this pace but I just wanted to feel good throughout the first one to build confidence going forward. The incline was at 1% for the entire run.
Thursday: 8 mi (58:28) - really easy to recover.
Friday: 8.5 mi (55:20) - Not blazing, but averaged about 6:30/mi and felt good.
Saturday: 8 mi (59:30)
Sunday: 8 mi (59:02)

If you noticed, I am wearing my watch again. I want to make sure I am going slow enough and am running much slower than I did last fall. I just want to make sure I stay injury free as I build mileage and I don't feel bad about the pace after reading Nate Jenkins' blog last year and seeing that he runs most of his mileage at 8:00 pace and has run 2:14 and change for the marathon. Given the time of the year up here in New England, it is appropriate that he has a discussion on treadmill training and the debate over incline on his blog.

Total for the week: 57.5mi
Should hit about 65 miles next week.

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