Archive for March 8th, 2009

I’m tired. Even with my day off on Monday, I ended up with 60 miles for the week.

It was also pretty dense as far as workload. Every other day had something: Wed had the fast fartleks, Friday had the 6-mile tempo run and today was a 15-miler (my longest run in a while) that included those same fast fartleks, then 2 miles easy, 2 miles “hard”, cooldown.

I started out quite slow today, 9:15s, knowing I was going to have to produce some energy midway through. When the fartleks started (15x1min on, one min off) I gave up the idea of shooting for 5K pace and was satisfied with doing them at 10K pace. It was still tough, I felt the fatigue of the week in my legs, and as I was running the fartlek portion, I was already writing my blog in my head about how I bagged the “hard” section, because just finishing the run was hard enough.

Then wonder of wonders, I’d completed my fartleks, almost done with my 2 easy and ready to ignore my Garmin beep signaling the Hard portion, when Kev appears on a bike next to me (Kev’s the guy I mentioned in last Sunday’s race report). He asked what I was up to, I said I was supposed to do 2 hard in a couple minutes but planned on bagging it, he said “I’ll pace you”. And he did!

It was so much easier having him there to chat with, I was able to do that part of the workout without thinking about it and while it wasn’t officially fast, I got a couple 8:07s out of it (hard enough considering I was planning on skipping it entirely). Thanks, Kev, much appreciated!

The only aggravation was I’d brought my 20oz. handheld and a gel but halfway through the run I knew I’d be dying for water at the end if I had to wash a gel down too, so I skipped the GU. It wasn’t missed, though I definitely could have used more water, here’s hoping the water fountains get turned on soon.

See how I’m already bitching and moaning about water and it was only 65 degrees? I’m doomed, I tell you.

Looking ahead, tomorrow is easy with 8 hill sprints, Tuesday is Hill Repeats (8x1min. uphill @ 5K effort w/jog-back recovery), Wed-Fri is easys with some strides, 5-mile race on Saturday, then 15 or 16 on Sunday. I don’t know if I mentioned it but I’m also doing a 5K the weekend after that (might as well start getting all my PRs lined up).

So that’s it for now, time to wash the salt off. Have a great Sunday night, folks!