First Workout - 5x1000m

2.2 mile warm up (16:04), 5x1000m @ 5k pace and 2.2 mile cool down (17:52). Workout splits and rests were 3:21 (3:37), 3:21 (3:36), 3:25 (3:42), 3:15 (4:13), 3:10.

I ran with Justin and Michael and was pretty was much hanging out for the first two and half repeats. I did not know what the body was capable of or it it would quit on me part way through the workout so I wanted to be cautious. The rests were long to start with and they started getting longer at the end so I tested myself a little and went solo at 400m of the 4th repeat and the entire 5th repeat. It felt good except my left shoe was tied too tight and my Achilles started bothering me. It really felt great to be working out again, especially since the weather is perfect for running.

9/6-9/12

I came up a bit short of the goal for the week (51.5 miles vs. a goal of 55-60 miles) but I only ran 6 days and I started to feel better than I have been feeling the last couple of weeks. I also got my first double-digit run in, a whopping 12.2 miles today. I do not think that my long run will get much longer than this for the foreseeable future. With my recent track record of injuries I am planning on limiting my long run to 15 miles, total miles to 70 and I will only run 6 days per week. If I need any more base work I can always jump on the bike and add it there. If I can stay healthy off this plan throughout the winter then I may have a shot at running some fast times on the track and roads in the spring. Here's the breakdown for the week:

Monday: 8.2mi (57:27) Easy run.

Tuesday: 7mi (49:30) Easy run.

Wednesday: 8.7mi (61:00) I went a bit longer than planned, but I felt good once I got going.
Thursday: 7.4mi (52:32) Meh ... Just getting in the miles.
Friday: 8mi (55:13) I actually felt pretty good today. I started out easy at about 7:30 pace and dropped it down to 6:30 pace by the end. Good day.

Saturday: 0 - intentionally took the day off.
Sunday: 12.2mi (87:06) Yay, I finally got in double digit run. I felt decent at the beginning but things went down hill after the mid-way. My lower legs felt sore and my lower back tightened up. What ever happened to those days when running felt good?

Completed: 51.5mi
Plan Total: 55-60mi

8/23-9/5

I did not post last week because things were so busy. After work each day I drove an hour back to Nashua to spend 1.5 hours helping out with my oldest son's XC practice and then 2-3 hours at my second oldest son's football practice. I leave the house at 6:30AM and do not get home until 9:30PM, so this does not leave a lot of time for running. I had 32 miles of running, 30 miles of cycling and I ran 15 miles with the Nashua PAL XC preseason conditioning camp. I won't count those miles because it was 9-11 min/mi pace.

I ran 51 miles this week, although 6 of those miles were with my son at about 10 min/mi pace. My lower legs have been feeling like crap all week. I am not too sure what it is but I have a hard time running more than 5-6 miles at a time without discomfort. It is a dull, aching in my calves and back of my ankles (Achilles) and I had some pitting edema early in the week in both legs. Just to be on the safe side I got some blood/urine tests done and everything checked out so I am not really sure what is going on. Maybe it is just old age. Hopefully my body is just taking longer than normal to get into the groove and I can work out of this funk soon. The goal is to move up to 55-60 miles this coming week if the old body cooperates.

8/16/2010-8/22/2010

38 miles in 6 runs.

6/14-6/20

Monday: 8.2mi (58:00) This was pretty slow because my left hip was a little tender. I spent some time working on it with the foam roller, stretching and popping advil.

Plan

Tuesday: AM - 4mi, PM - 10mi

Wednesday: AM - 3mi, PM - 10mi
Thursday: AM - 4mi, PM - 8mi
Friday: AM - 4, PM - 10mi w/ ss run
Saturday: 8mi
Sunday: 16mi

Completed: 8.2mi

Plan Total: 75-85mi

6/7-6/13

This was a pretty hard week because I ran 81 miles, did three hard workouts and did my first 20+ mile long run. I am not sure how often I will run that long, but I wanted to see if I could do it at this point in my training. The hard workouts were a 5km tempo run in 16:12, hill repeats and a 10km steady-state run in 34:33. I am going to shoot for 80-85 miles next week but limit myself to 2 hard workouts.

Monday: AM - 3mi (20:56) Easy run at work. PM - 10mi (66ish) On Wednesday we are going to run hills and I wanted to get something fast in so I did a 5k tempo run tonight. I got out of work late so I did not make it back to Nashua for the Mine Falls Park Trail Race tonight so I ran the tempo run on the track. This worked out well because I was not sure about pace and running it on the track allowed me to get splits. My goal was to hit 5:20 pace for the first two miles and then run what ever felt good for the last mile. I was still feeling pretty tired from my long run and my legs were heavy but I settled into 79 sec/400m pace after about the first mile and split 5:15, 10:29 (5:14), 15:34 (5:05), 16:12 (:37). The first two miles were very comfortable, although not really that smooth, but I was working pretty hard on the last mile. I feel like I could have held 5:10-5:15 pace for another mile or two but I did not want to over-do it tonight. I did a three mile warm up (20:47) and a four mile cool down (28:52).

Tuesday: AM - 8.2mi (59:49) Slow recovery run early in the morning, PM - 6mi (41:57) Easy run.

Wednesday: AM - 3.3mi (24:20) Easy run to loosen up the legs, PM - 11.9mi (1:20:24) I warmed up by running 4 miles to the school and then we went to a hill close to Nashua South to do repeats. I think that the hill is about 1/5th of a mile long. The workout was 5 sets of 1/3, 2/3, all the way up and then a 100 meter stride at the bottom of the hill. The total workout added up to about 3.5 miles. I cooled down by running 3.5 miles home. I did one of the miles at MP (actually, I only hit 5:55 and felt like crap) to flush out the legs. I felt really tired today and my legs are beat up a bit so I am going to go really easy and short tomorrow.
Thursday: 6mi (44:13) I bailed on doubles today and did a really easy run. I was feeling over tired today and I have a steady-state run tomorrow so hopefully this will help.
Friday: 12mi+ (80ish) Instead of doing my standard 10 mile steady-state run I decided to do a 10km stead-state run on the track to mix things up. The main reason I did this was that I wanted to run a bit faster than the road run, even if I cut the distance. I started out with a 3 mile warm up and some strides. After how tired I felt yesterday I was not sure how I would feel today but things went pretty well. I wore my heart-rate monitor and set my HR alarms to 165bpm and 176bpm (170bpm should be roughly MP for me with HRM = 205bpm). My splits and HR were:

Mile Split Mile Split Avg. HR
1 5:35 5:35 166
2 11:06 5:31 170
3 16:39 5:32 171
5k 17:20
4 22:07 5:28 173
5 27:38 5:30 174
6 33:12 5:33 175
10k 34:33

I guess that looking at the HR it was steadily increasing over the run, so it was a bit faster than "steady-state". I finished with a strong 3 mile cool-down. Rest tomorrow.
Saturday: 0 - I just did not get around to running.
Sunday: 21.1 (2:33:33.) This was a pretty tough run because I did not have anywhere to get fluids on the route that I ran and it was 4 miles longer than my longest run so far. I decided to just take it slow and steady and focus on just getting the miles in rather than worry about pace. I averaged 7:17 pace, which is not bad for this long of a run.

Completed: 81.5mi

Plan Total: 75-85mi