Week 15 - Taper, Glorious Taper

Ahhh. Finally - the easy stuff. I did 4 miles with DaveB and JCoe on Monday - just down to Eastern Point campus and back up in 33 minutes. Dave and JC had me going at a pretty fast pace - relatively speaking. It was a beautiful day to be out. Unlike today. Today I did 5.8 miles with Larry and DaveT in 49 minutes. The pace was pretty easy for the most part - but Larry and I did the "Sneaker's Mile" pickup in 6:58 - pretty good! Rest, don't Rust!

So I have another miscellaneous do whatever run on Friday - then I'll need to do 10-12 miles on Sunday. I'm thinking maybe doing a 8:40 pace 8 miles - with an easy 1.5 warmup and cooldown. The goal would be to practice my marathon pace - since I've neglected to do that. The only tricky part is getting some good mile-markers from google earth - since I'll have to do this one from home.

Week 14: Done.

One more week of training left. I did 9 miles in the dark - around Groton Long Point last night after the kiddo's were in bed. Easily the best run of last week. In retrospect, I think I should've done something to get recovery after a hard Tarzan Brown race last Sunday - as all my runs hurt last week. The cramping on the long run Friday was a bit of a mental blow, but I'm going to take it as a wake-up call. First, I know anything can happen in the marathon and second I'll make more of an effort to eat and drink better that morning. With that behind me, last nights run felt pretty effortless - 9 miles in 1 hour 20 minutes. The pace felt good and easy - like I could have kept it up a lot longer. I almost wish I had another 18-20 miler left - but I'll have to make due with this week's 12.

Am I Still Training for a Marathon Week?

So week 14 has been tough. I always imagined a glorious marathon taper. In reality - I still have to schlep my butt out every day for a run. My quads were pretty toasted after the Tarzan Brown run - so Monday I did and easy 5 miles over 46 minutes. I followed that up with 5 more easy miles on Tuesday [47 minutes this time]. Followed by another 5 'easy' miles today [46 minutes]. I decided my goal was to not get injured and try to avoid getting sick - which I of course have little control over. Anyway - tomorrow is a day off and Friday I'll gun for 15 miles. I realized that next week I also have to cram 31 miles into 5 days of running - so much for glorious taper mode. Yes, it's easier - but it's still a lot of running.

Week 6: In the Books

Today I finished week six with an easy 5.7 miler pushing Elena in the jogger. We went slow: 53 minutes. The only news of note is that my new Asics didn't suck. I could feel a little rubbing on the left heal, but no soreness in the right Achillies, which is in the grand scheme, more of a worry. I'm not certain if these will ever get to the point of use-ability on the long runs, but I did 12 of the 35 miles this week in them, and hope to bump that up to 15-20/week. I'll have to buy some Adrenlines at some point, and probably do the race in them.

Speaking of 35 miles, I pretty certain that's a new record for me in 1 week, and the 16-miler Friday is the longest run I've ever done. My reward - an "easy" week: 30 miles, only 6-miles/run for 5 runs - starting with tomorrow's 3x1 mile interval workout. If I remember, I'll try and head over to Bluff point this week after work to do some trail running.

Easy Running

Today ended my 'easy' week with a 5+ miler around both loops. It took exactly 39 minutes. We had a good crowd today: 2 Daves, JCoe and myself. Perfect weather to start the run - although it's clouding-up in time for the weekend. Next week starts my last week of 'tough' training and that should be pretty easy: just intervals and a long run - no tempo work.

Recovery Week

So my upper back decided to do the literal interpretation of that phrase, as it spasmed on me getting out of the shower Tuesday morning. It rained most of the day Tuesday - so it's not like I missed getting out anyway. So my first recovery run was today. I made it about 4.7 miles at an ok pace (probably ~8min/miles), considering that the day before I couldn't really turn my head. Hopefully the weather won't suck the rest of the week and I can get my other easy run in. The nice part about this training program now is that next week is the only challenging week I have left - then it's another easy taper week before the race. Cool.