November 9th-15th Training

Monday: 3.8 miles (8:32) and then 5.5 miles (7:11)

Tuesday: 8.5 miles (6:35).  Super hilly run with about 1400 ft. of elevation gain in 6.8 miles (according to my Garmin). Nothing fancy, just easy/moderate effort while running up-and-down them. I ran down and back on Country Hills, which is 1.7 miles each way.  The first mile of it showed no mercy with 301 feet of gain and 201 feet of loss.

Wednesday: 8 miles (6:49)

Thursday: 7.6 miles with a 3200m, 1/2 mile jog, 1600m, 1/2 mile jog, 4x400m with 1:00 jog.  I ran with local high school kid, Nash Young.  I've run with Nash a few times and I also run with another high school kid who lives down the street from me, Nathan Watson, every couple of weeks. The thing is, they go to rival high schools and they are the top two runners in the county, and thus, bitter rivals. It's a good rivalry because they have opposite personalities and racing strategies (Nash is the higher-strung kicker and Nathan is the laid-back grinder).  Anyway, it was temporarily awkward because when I met Nash at the track, Nathan was working out.  I made it more fun by making them run together on Nash's warm-up, which was Nathan's cooldown.  But they are both good kids and they are both pretty untapped and will run well in college (Nash at Austin Peay and Nathan at UT-Chattanooga).

But the workout was a 3200m at 10:25-10:30ish, 800m jog, 1600m at 5:00ish, 800m jog, and up to 6x400m at 70-72 with 100m jog. Since it was windy and  didn't want high school impatience taking over, I led the first two intervals and we ran 10:26 (felt a little rusty), 4:58 (not too bad) and on the 400s, ran 70.1, 69.7, 67.3, 64.3.  The 400s got a little tough towards the end and it was a fitness reality check as running 20x400m in 64.3 with 100m jog was one of my staple workouts when I'm in solid shape.  Anyway, not a bad rust buster.

Friday: 4 miles (8:30)

Saturday: 10.5 miles (6:46)

Sunday: 20 miles (6:34).  Met Spencer with a planned 20 miler progression, where we worked from 7:15 to 6:00ish pace.  Since I was meeting Spencer, I should have known we would start out too fast as we dropped a 6:43 first mile.  We tried to be a little more conscious of the pace and kept around the 6:35-6:40 area before dropping it down to a 6:04 16th mile.  We were helped by a generous downhill to a 5:46 17th mile and then I decided to test Spencer a little bit as we went 5:43 and then 5:32.  He hung pretty well and just wants to run under 2:50 at the Memphis Marathon in three weeks but I think he can run under 2:45 and make a run at 2:40.  But the first one is hard to figure out!  But personally, my legs were getting a little bit achy with the distance (first run over 10.5 miles in five weeks) but the pace felt good aerobically.

Week Total: 67.9 miles.  Not a terrible week and two good sessions.  Hopefully next week will be a little tougher with more volume.