Another month, another solid block of training. Consistency, consistency, consistency! While the mileage fluctuated a little from the low 60’s to the mid 70’s per week, my body is becoming very adapted to this level of work. It’s looking like 2010 will be my best year ever in terms of volume!
With my overall goal of running mid-high 2:30’s at the Chicago Marathon next year, it looks like I am setting myself up well for this goal. Instead of having a great 6-8 weeks before a marathon, I’d rather have 18 months of solid training under my belt.
This training period has a few important milestones, like two races and my first 18 mile run in several months. I also started to do faster workouts to prepare me for a few upcoming races. Although, to be fair, I didn’t do as much faster work that I wanted to because I got started late in the training cycle. Lesson learned.
Let’s take a look at the weekly highlights:
9.6 – 9.12 – 72 miles with a 13 mile medium-long run and a 17 mile long run. Workouts this week included a 20 minute tempo on the trails in Rock Creek Park and 5x600m in 1:57, 1:55, 1:55, 1:52, 1:49. The track turned out to be asphalt with no line marks (seriously?) so I started slower and only did 5 reps instead of 6. I wasn’t going to beat my legs up for this introductory speed workout.
9.13 – 9.19 – 63 miles with a 13 mile medium-long run and no long run. I raced an 8k on Saturday and was pretty sore afterward so I cut the long run to avoid pushing it too much. I did a lot of surges/sprints at the end of my runs throughout the week and my one workout was a 3 loop tempo in Rock Creek in 22:13 (7:29, 7:24, 7:20).
9.20 – 9.26 – 60 miles with a 13 mile medium-long run and a 17 mile long run. This week I had friends in town Friday – Sunday and well, boys will be boys. I took Sunday off and only ran an easy 6 miles on Saturday. My one workout was a 2 loop tempo in 15:32 + 4×60″ hill reps. This week’s mileage was low because of the easy days but I am not stressing too much about the details – the consistency is great overall.
9.27 – 10.3 – 68 miles with a 13 mile medium-long run and a 14 mile long run. I raced a 5k (and won!) on Saturday and even though I turned down the effort level after the first mile, my arches were pretty sore. Once again, racing has limited my long run. My workout this week was a 1 loop tempo in 7:38 + 6×90″ hard efforts with 1′ jog recovery during my medium-long run.
10.4 – 10.10 – 74 miles with an 11 mile medium-long run (is this even a MLR? Who knows) and an 18 mile long run. I was in Denver for a few days this week so I didn’t have time for 13 miles, unless I wanted to get up at 4:30 in the morning. I still ran a 19 minute tempo and the last mile or two of the long run at a moderate effort progression (probably low 6:00 minute pace).
Overall I’m feeling very strong and 10-11 mile “maintenance” runs are becoming routine. I think I’m recovery quickly from day to day training and am looking forward to dialing up the miles every so slightly. I’d like to be in the 80-85 range for the next month or so and then focus on some faster work before a few races in November/December.
There’s an indoor track meet series in Virginia this January that I’m interested. They run mile and 3k races and I’d love to PR in both events (my current PR’s are 4:33 and 9:04 from 2006). Faster workouts would be needed and I’d probably have to decrease my mileage to 60-65, but I think it’s worth it to run fast. Isn’t that the point?
August’s Mileage: 187
September’s Mileage: 276
Annual Mileage: 2,381
Current Training/Racing Shoes: ASICS DS-Trainers, Saucony Grid Fastwitch 4, ASICS Hyper Speed 4.
