Weekly/Monthly Totals

Wow, it's been three weeks since I've entered anything here. During that time, I took a short trip down to Southern California and spent a week in Topeka, Kansas. It is difficult to maintain any type of consistent training while traveling. It's just too hard to maintain a consistent schedule. Two weeks in a row, I only ran four days, totalling 46 the week of March 11-17 and 36 miles the week of March 18-24. This past week, I started my shortened training schedule for the Rock 'n Roll Marathon, which is the first week of June. Here's how the training went:

Sunday - 15 miles, including 5 at marathon pace
Monday - rest day
Tuesday - 10 miles, including three at 6:30 pace
Wednesday - 7 recovery miles
Thursday - 15 miles, including 6 at marathon pace
Friday - 8 recovery miles
Saturday - 6 easy miles
TOTAL: 61 miles

Overall the week went well. I did run the MP miles too fast on Sunday, and my legs were sore Monday and Tuesday. I considered running only the miles and skipping the faster paces on Tuesday, but after warming up, I decided I could do it.

My March ended up as follows:

Total Miles: 250
Running Days: 24
Doubles: 1
Off Days: 7

Overall the numbers aren't bad. It's worse though knowing that up until March 15, I had only taken one off day and had run 153 miles. The last half of March isn't much to talk about.

My plan was to take a shot at sub-3:00 at Rock 'n Roll, but I don't really know if that's possible. My PR (set at 2006 Napa Valley Marathon) is 3:06:xx, and I had a better base and a longer training schedule for that race. At this point, I'm heavier and haven't put in the base miles that I ran last year. I'll continue to train for sub-3:00, but there's a good possibility that I'll have to come up with a more realistic game plan when June rolls around.

I'm not really upset that sub-3:00 may not be within reach at this time. In fact, I'm really looking forward to taking a shot at it at Napa in 2008. I'll have RnR recovery in June and then July, August, September, and I think part of October for base building before going back to Pfitzinger's 18/70 plan.

Weekly Update - Running Well

Sunday – 17.3
Monday – 8.7
Tuesday – 12.5
Wednesday – 5.5 at lunch and 7.5 after work
Thursday – 10
Friday – 11
Saturday – 7.5
TOTAL – 80 Miles

I’ve been working to get to 80 miles for a while; it was good to finally get there. It seems like a big jump from 60 to 80, but I had up to 75 miles over a seven-day period not long ago, so the increase was fairly modest. All running these days is at a fairly easy pace. I’ve been good at running my recovery runs slow enough to actually serve their purpose. For this past week, I basically ran between 7:50-7:55 on easy days and between 8:15-8:30 on recovery days, depending on how I felt and how windy it was.

I started this week off with a 20-mile run at 7:59 pace. Including today’s run, I’m at 100 miles over the past 8 days. I don’t tract 8-day mileage totals, but I would bet that’s a new high for me.

Weekly Recap

Here's how my week shook out:

Sunday - 15.5 miles at easy pace.
Monday - Off Day
Tuesday - 5.5 miles on dark, rainy night
Wednesday - 5.5 at lunch and 7.5 after work
Thursday - 11.5 after work
Friday - 10 after work
Saturday - 5.5
TOTAL: 61 miles

All runs were at an easy pace. I'm still concentrating more on mileage than pace.

I ran 17.3 mostly easy miles today. I ran 2 x 1 mile at marathon pace just to remind myself of how the pace should feel. I'm shooting for 80 miles this week. Then I'll try to get into the 60s the following two weeks. However, I'm traveling some during both these weeks, so the mileage may suffer a bit. The faster running begins the week of 25 March.