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Week 42
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Well, another ridiculously busy week, and I must say that I haven't been a great steward of the thread. I certainly haven't responded much or guided much conversation. Well, it's spring break, so I hope to be a little more responsive this week. Of course, this isn't my thread; it's your thread, so I hope that you all don't feel that you must wait for my cue to engage.
For the week, I still managed to get 55+ miles on seven days running, in between my very hectic schedule. My daily log reads as such:
S: 10 moderate (7:12 pace)
M: 7 mostly easy, but w/1 fairly hard 1600m (5:29)
T: 6 easy
W: 8 easy (5 on grass)
R: 8.5 w/5x(.2 on, .2 off) total time for the 3200m: 11:38
F: 7.5 very easy
S: 8.5 easy
Notes:
1) My intention was to mostly up the mileage, but to keep the hard stuff to a minimum, buy I didn't do the best job of that.
2) I wanted to run 5 of the 10miles on Sunday at a harder pace, but none of the fastest runners in our running groups showed up for the group run, so I just ran with those I could.
3) The hard mile (technically 1600m) on Monday wasn't planned (maybe in the back of my mind, I missed the Sunday), just one of those trips over to the indoor track for some noon-hour miles. After a few miles of warm-up, I just started running faster and faster, finishing the penultimate 800 in 2:50, and the final 800 in 2:39, followed with a few more miles cool-down.
4) Thursdays .2 on, .2 off (again, technically 320m) was meant to be the one interval workout for the week. My intention was to keep the on's right around 60s (5 min pace) and the off’s around 80s (6:40 pace). I hit it pretty close, with the on's averaging 61, and the off's just under 79. I also added a relatively hard (~6:10) mile later during the day’s miles.
5) Friday and Saturday I took it easy, as my hip says I overdid it a bit on Thursday. I’m feeling much better this morning; hope to tempo 5 later this afternoon, after the SEC championships (Go Cats!)
Here we are, March has arrived, and I'm thinking of jumping into a race pretty soon. There’s a 3k “Shamrock Shuffle” next Saturday, might be the ticket….
Other miscellaneous comments that I would have liked to have posted earlier:
i) Thanks for all your concerns about the tornadoes down here. The front page of our local paper has shown nothing but the resulting destruction every day since. Many lives have been completely turned upside-down. We’ve been very fortunate in Lexington proper.
ii) Double, I wish that I had your more Zen approach to running; I’ve a friend here who will be turning 50 in September, who won’t race anymore. He easily cleans my clock whenever I try to run with him, and I venture that he would challenge racerdb; he still challenges and tests himself running 65-80 mpw including some very hard self-timed time trials. I don’t get it, but then again, I didn’t run the Bluegrass 10000 in 30 minutes, and win it twice (among other victories), either. So it could be the scientist in me, could be that I never reached my potential in my youth (cut short by injuries), could be that I need a challenge to keep me going (probably a combination of all the above), but I find that I need to have race goals to keep at it. It still hasn’t caused me to alter my diet, though, so I’m with you on that.
iii) Kudo’s to AK-54 and all the other XC skiers. Just love it. I had a bunch of friends do one or other of the Birkie races. They all report having had a great time.
iv) racerdb, glad to hear that you are getting this shin issue under control. Your shin issue and the PF that others have been suffering really is frustrating (and painful), I’m sure. It’s great to read the reports of other’s solutions that have helped.
v) Just really neat to see all the different types of training that people are doing. Gives a nice cross-section of where we are at as masters runners. I especially enjoy reading the self-assessment that people have put forth; helps to keep it real, IMHO.
Hope you are all well, and look forward to hearing what is happening in your lives.
Cheers!