September 21st-27th Training

Monday: 5 miles (7:27); 5 miles (8:17); 5.5 miles (7:17)

Tuesday: 12.4 miles (6:58)

Wednesday: 9.4 miles with 10xhill blasts (7:24); 5.6 miles (7:21)

Thursday: 10 miles with bombed workout.  The plan was 3k at 4:50-4:55, 2k at 4:40-4:45 and 5x1k, working from 4:40 to 4:30.  My legs were really heavy from the start and I was slowing down with each lap.  After 2200m into the 3k, I was currently running about 5:10 pace, so I called it a morning; 6.1 miles (6:53)

Friday: 10 miles with 4 miles of 30s fast/2:30 moderate. To make up for yesterday and to not be too beat up for Sunday, I was allowed to run up to 10 variations, so I decided on this workout.  Averaged 5:24 for the four miles, with a little over 4:20 pace for the fast part...felt nice and smooth; 3.7 miles (7:47)

Saturday: 10.6 miles (6:48).  Legs felt like complete crap the last couple of miles...felt like walking; 4.4 miles (7:16)

Sunday: 16.5 miles with shortened workout. The plan if I felt like a million bucks with perfect weather was to run a 25km with 5ks at 5:20 pace, 5:15, 5:10, 5:05, 5:00.  But the big goal was to get in some work and not pushing too hard.  Since it was really muggy (69 with 67 DP), I figured the conditions would slow things down about 5-7s a mile. I went through the first 5k at 5:23 pace, feeling really smooth.  My plan was to do at least 20k of progressive running and if I felt good, run two complete down-and-backs on my speedwork road, which would be about 13.1 miles and push the last 1k+ at a hard effort.

Second 5k also felt smooth at 5:20 pace, and the third was mostly ok at 5:14.  As soon as I started running the fourth one with a goal of 5:10 pace, my legs started to struggle and it got progressively worse, so I called it at just under a mile in (was at 5:07 pace) to finish 10.2 miles in 5:18 pace.

Obviously I would have liked to run further and faster but I had a huge workout last week and I don't need to put too much stress on legs.

On a bright side, my girls and boys finished first in their cross country meet today.  And props to the kid who ran so hard to get the victory in the boys race, that he threw up the last 15m.

Week Total:104.2 miles. The plan was closer to 110 with two solid workouts.  Even though it felt good at the time, I think last Sunday beat me up a good bit.  Since that went so well, I'm not too worried.  This week the volume will be around 90ish with one track workout and a little bit of MP running in a much shortened long run.

I'm really looking forward to the mileage reduction and racing everyone at Chicago in a couple of weeks even though I'm still not on the entry list for some reason.