April 1st-7th Training

Monday: 5.9 miles (6:37); 9.1 miles (7:14)

Tuesday: 10.2 miles (6:38); 5.6 miles (6:50)

Wednesday: 4 miles (6:51); 13.6 miles with 10 miles of fast/medium (5:19) over hills. Since I'm getting back to "normal" I decided to run a hard workout, but run it as a fartlek so I had less pressure.  As always, I didn't know my pace and only had the 3:00 timer counting down on my screen.  Ran from the bottom of Jenkins to almost Stop 30 and back, which includes a lot of rolling hills with literally less than a couple hundred meters of flat ground.  Wanted to run a little harder then half-marathon effort on the fast portion and keep a somewhat steady jog on the recovery.  Gradually worked into the pace and really struggled a little over halfway through because of a couple tough hills on the fast portion.  On the steady jog, I felt like my quads were about to explode but after that, it got better.  Had to stop for about 10 seconds after my second to last fast portion because I thought I was going to puke (ate three roast/banana pepper sandwiches literally a few minutes before the workout).  Pleased with the workout because I was expecting to average around 5:30 pace. Averaged right around 5:00 pace for the fast part and a little over 5:40 pace for the moderate (the moderate was around 6:00 pace the last few).

Thursday: 4 miles (6:41); 12 miles (6:46)

Friday: 5.9 miles (6:55); 9.1 miles (6:52)

Saturday: 11.6 miles with 5k in 14:50 (4:48, 4:54, 4:40, 28).Ran a local 5k and was planning on running in the 14:50s.  Let some little kids lead for a while before I took the lead and ran solo the rest of the way.  Felt good on the first mile, which included a little hill. On the second mile, I struggled running up a long, gradual hill and on the last mile, I got rolling and was sub 4:30 pace for a while.  Got pretty tired in the last half mile running up another gradual hill but was fine at the finish.  Pleased with the time, based on the effort I put out.  The course was certified, but they only blocked one of the lanes of traffic, so you couldn't run the tangents that well; 3.4 miles (7:41)

Sunday: 16 miles (6:16). Plan was 21 miles and I got rolling pretty quickly.  Felt hungry/low blood sugarish from the get-go but figured it would pass.  It never really did.  I cut off a section of the run, which would bring it to about 20 miles, but at 16 miles, I felt really weak, so I stopped. Unfortunately, it was four miles from home.  I saw on the park bench waiting to see if there were any runners I knew so I could use their phone to call Mary.  All I saw were some families and I didn't want to come off as a creepy guy, so I walked a half mile to Wal-Mart and called her then.  Luckily, the free sample cookies were out and I devoured more than my fair share.  Frustrating run but the long run isn't as important when you're not training to race the marathon.  I was going to run later, but was too lazy.

Week Total=110.4 miles.  Feel like I'm coming around.  Had a solid, strenuous workout on Wednesday, which was the deepest I've had to dig in a few months.  Saturday was ok but bummed with having to end the long run so early.  This week, I'll probably throw in a moderate workout and will either run a 10k race as a tempo run or race a half-marathon.