Middle Week Decent

Wednesday:

The morning was beautiful and required a mere tee and shorts. The loop took me up to Kenwood and Howard Gnesen before making a loop down to Skyline Blvd. As time passed my internal clock could tell I had been running for about thirty minutes. When I looked my watch showed 30:40. Something happens at a half an hour. I begin to loosen up and start to breathe more freely. A super nice feeling. It was at that point I knew I would make my distance and be ready for the next days workout. Up until that point I thought the week was a wash and I would be taking more recovery days to the weekend. Once I got to the track I did a series of loops to round out the hour.

Total: 1:00:20 8.4 miles

Thursday:

I woke up eager to see how the legs would respond to a little tempo work. The assignment for the morning was to warm up, do 2 x 3 miles at tempo pace (5:20-5:35 pace) and end with a decent warm down. To be honest, when I looked up my paces on the McMillan calculator I was a bit weary that the paces would fall in the low end and possibly slower. I just told myself to run comfortably/hard and let the pace be what it may for the day fully knowing I was running on tired legs from the weekends race.

When I got the warm up complete and the next mile marker on the london road was approaching I knew it was time to get to work. I had to use my 'internal gps' as my watch was completely dead upon my discovery this morning. (in the end it was a blessing to NOT have it with me as I was able to get a feel for pace on my own.) As I worked into the first mile I was very happy to see 5:26 show as I crossed the one mile marker. The next was a bit harder and the third was relatively flat. After a nice 5 minute jog in between the intervals I regrouped and ran the next very consistently. The morning was a bit weird. I fully expected my lungs to be screaming at that pace and have me slow down, but my lungs were great and I was holding back on pace because of sore legs and glutes. Quite the pleasant surprise to say the least. After a nice warm down back uphill to the house I called it a morning of successful interval running.

Total: 1:28:42 12.5 miles

2X 3 mile tempo:

interval 1: 16:27

interval 2: 16:20

Friday:

Had a difficult time getting out of the fart pit this morning. I snoozed the alarm for some 45 minutes before telling myself to get up and do run for at least a half an hour. That was all it took and I had a wonderful run out to Martin road and back to get a good hour of recovery type running in the books.

Another beautiful morning. Just a bit of soreness in the quads from yesterday's repeats but after the run I was feeling much better. I think I am turning the corner form the 10 mile race and should be ready for the 'marathon' on Sunday.

Total: 58:22 8 miles