My Week...So Far

6/5/2006
15 miles during lunch with 4.5 miles @ 5:40 pace. Not sure what I was trying to accomplish with this run other than to wear out the legs early on in the run and then keep a decent pace for the last few miles. I did the tempo miles from mile 3-7.5 and then had another 7.5 miles to go. It was a good workout. I actually didn't expect to go 15 miles when I set out on this run, but it was so nice out, I just kept crusing along. Good run.
6/6/2006
12 slow relaxed miles. A little shaky from yesterday's tough workout so this was definitely a recovery run. It's kind of nice to have recovery runs now. When I was doing every run at a general aerobic pace, there wasn't much room for these nice and easy runs.
6/7/2006
Mile repeat day. This was my first visit to the "track" all year so I really had no idea what to expect. I quote the word track because actually I do these around a .4 mile path that runs around a little park by my house. They have each .1 mile marked so I do 2 1/2 laps for the mile and then jog the .2 back to the starting line for another one. Last year I was doing most of the miles around 5:30, so I had that as my baseline. I also started very slowly last year, starting at 2 repeats and working up to 5 by the end of the year. Since I was going into this one with a good base though, I figured I would just do 5 right off the bat and see what happened. I was pleasantly surprised. My times were 5:22, 5:21, 5:23, 5:25, 5:24. The thing about these were that I didn't really feel smooth on any of them. They all felt choppy and unnatural, but I won't argue with the results.

In looking at the McMillan Calculator, for a 2:36 marathoner, it says I should be doing my mile repeats at 5:07-5:18. However that is for the speed workouts. The way I do these, with the shorter rest interval it is actually closer to his definition of cruise intervals. For those, it says I should be running 5:18-5:25, so I'm in range there. Whatever. I don't want to get to analytical on all this stuff (I know...too late for that). This was a good solid workout and definitely something to build on.

I did do 7 miles in the afternoon too. It was nice and relaxed.

6/8/2006
The Halsted Run (23 miles). For the most part, this was a pretty uneventful run, which is good as far as I'm concerned. It was somewhere in the 2 1/2 hour range and I felt decent throughout the run. I was a little worried about hydration since this was definitely the warmest that it's been on a day that I've done this run, but it was fine. I lived. I was also happy with how my legs bounced back from yesterday's hard effort. I wasn't sure what they would feel like since I haven't really done hard intervals all year. They were fine. I wonder if the second run in the afternoon yesterday helped knock some of the gunk out of the legs. Hmmm...
6/9/2006
10 miles with 6 strides near the end. Since I'm open to change I incoporated the strides during the last mile of my run. From a purely logistical standpoint, I like it. It was nice not having to go to the field across the street after my run and do them. It also helped that last mile go by fast. However, I'm fairly certain the cars passing me on the street thought I stole something.

Tomorrow is my first 10K in almost 6 years. The last one I did was when I was in Germany in 2000. It came after a summer of great training, and I ran a 35:30. I hope to improve on that tomorrow. I'm pretty confident I will.