November 4th-10th Training

Monday: 9 miles (6:56); 6.5 miles (7:09)

Tuesday: 6.5 miles (6:53); 10.6 miles (7:19)

Wednesday: 4.8 miles (6:52); 13.7 miles with 3200m, 4:00 rest, 1600m, 3:00 rest, 5x400m with 1:00 rest.  Plan was to run sub 9:40, 4:30 and 66.  Ran 9:35 (4:47, 4:48) which felt nice and smooth.  I was expecting the mile to hurt but it felt really controlled in 4:29.  I felt like I could have continued on and run sub 9:00 for 3200m if I pushed some.  I averaged 64.4 on the 400s and felt super smooth on those.  I thought they would have given me a good bit of oxygen debt but the time was easy to hit and 1:00 rest felt like way too much.  The nasty stomach stuff from the marathon came for some revenge and I had to head to the bathroom after my fifth 400, which unfortunately meant driving across the street. I was going to come back and run a couple 800s at 2:10ish to give me a strong anaerobic stimulus, since I had so much recovery time but it was raining pretty hard at this point and I just ran a marathon on Saturday. So I'll take 5x400m, instead of the planned 10.

Thursday: 10.2 miles (6:41); 6.8 miles (7:27)

Friday: 11.1 miles with 6x400m hills.  Ran the hills in 77 average (had an outlier of 81.80). Since my next workout isn't until Sunday, I wanted a bit of a hard stimulus but nothing too tough.  Hill repeats fit the bill but man I hate them. I'd struggle the last 100m of every rep and the entire time I reminded myself that I'm an idiot for debating running Club Cross next month, which is a course being BUILT by Max King. It's going to be five loops and I'm sure there are going to be plenty of hills. On grass. At altitude; 5 miles (6:39) Also got 125.1 miles for the last seven days, which I believe is a new lifetime mileage PR. Thanks, marathon cushion.

Saturday: 10.7 miles (7:03); 4.4 miles (7:35)

Sunday: 6.1 miles (6:58); Skipped workout. I hate a long, tough track workout for the afternoon but I had a pretty rough migraine and had to lay down for a few hours. When you are married, with two kids, have some training programs to work on and need to go to Wal-Mart, you don't get many running windows. I'll make it up tomorrow.

Week Total: 105.4 miles. This would have been over 120 but at least I got in some extra recovery with the reduced volume, intensity and Friday's massage.  I'm really pleased with the marathon recovery because it didn't tire me out any more than a normal long run. I had signed up to run the 12k Championships this weekend but scratched.  I really don't feel like heading out of town again and I don't feel like spending $500+ on a race that I don't have any motivation to run.  And then I had to figure out how to get to Alexandria from Baltimore and got tired of reading all about these green lines, yellow lines, bus routes, etc. It looks like only about 1/3 of the qualified field for the men is racing.  I'm interested in seeing how a lot of the guys come back from the marathon and am predicting Aaron Braun for the win.