September 8th-14th Training

Monday: 8 miles (6:54a); 6.3 miles (7:13)

Tuesday: 8.5 miles (6:53); 6.6 miles (7:11)

Wednesday: 11.1 miles with 12x.15 miles on/.35 miles off. This is a workout I like to do when I want to get the wheels going but not have a real workout...sort of like doing 200s on the track, except it's on the road with bigger recovery.  During a marathon cycle, I sometimes like to run 10ish miles moderately (90-95%) in the morning and then run 8x.15 in the afternoon on heavier legs.  During a marathon cycle, I feel speedwork is really overrated, so this let's you keep in touch with your speed with some cumulative fatigue built in. Anyway, I avereaged 4:19 on the fast portion which isn't too fast but I was on the greenway and half were into the wind.  So even though I ran slower than I thought, it felt like I was running really fast and I had good power and turnover, so I took that as a good sign; 7.7 miles (7:11)

Thursday: 8 miles (7:09); 9.1 miles (6:46)

Friday: 8.4 miles (6:47); 5.5 miles with strides (7:09)

Saturday: 10.6 miles with 6k in 18:10. I didn't know anything about the course but was hoping to run a hardish effort and run 5:00 pace if I could, assuming it was a flat course.  Well, the course was uphill the first half before coming back down with a good tailwind on the way out and tough headwind on the way back.  And right before the race, I noticed Justus David showed up, which bummed me out because there was some money on the line.  I decided to take it out hardish and we went through the mile in 4:53.  The second mile climbed a lot and when I was given a small gap, I pushed the pace pretty hard to increase my lead and came through in 5:03.  I had about 20s on the turnaround, ran the third mile quick in 4:30 and ran the last .77 on my GPS in 3:44 to win by a minute.  Felt really strong and never really struggled.  Really pleased with this performance and I didn't even struggle on the hills; 4.5 miles (7:30)

Sunday: 9.5 miles (6:33). I was going to do a long run but my legs weren't feeling it all.  Guess I'm fitter than I thought but don't recover as quickly as I would like.  I was going to run more later, but I had an insanely busy day.

Week Total: 103.9 miles.  A little lower than I would like but cutting the long run 11 mile short will do that to it.  Regardless, good week overall and the best I've felt in a while.  My hgb is up to 15.5 now, with a "normal" baseline of about 16.0, so things are looking better.  I'm headed to Costa Rica this weekend for the Tamarindo Beach Half-Marathon.  It should definitely be an interesting experience.  I was also happy to see Ryan Hall finally get a coach, so hopefully he can make a comeback for the Trials.  I wish he would have stuck with Canova but maybe Jack Daniels can bring some consistency.