Yesterday finished off a 68 mile week and with it, a tasty weekend of running.  Saturday was an easy 9 miler, avg. 8:29 (it’s still shocking to me to see any average under 8:45 after this stupidly hot summer).  Sunday’s Long Run wasn’t actually long since it’s the end of the training cycle, but it was a goody: 12.1 progression.

My usual progression style is to go comfortably until 4.5 mi from home, do the progression for 3.5 and then the last mile is cooldown, only because there are stoplights and intersections in that last mile, so I kind of have to do it that way.  So for a 12, I’d start the faster bit at mile 7.5.

First mile of the run, I was immediately back in slowland, 9:02, a fact I’m now totally ok with – if my body wants to start that way from here on in, so be it, it’s clear to me now that this is meaningless in the scheme of things.  Anyway, as I trundle along, I contemplate what paces to shoot for in the progression.  Still unsure of my current fitness (and that 9:02 isn’t helping) I decide low 8s to start, then whittling down to 7:40ish.

This is how it played out:

9:02, 8:42, 8:25, 8:19,

8:12 – “hmmm, a little early but it feels good”

8:00 – I come upon a young couple I had seen up ahead during my first mile but who had long disappeared, so of course I’m an asshole and have to pass the shit out of them.  I look down at the Garmin and see 7:36. “Oops, back off the pace, girl!” I shake out my arms, cool the jets.

8:00 – loony-tune park regular on bicycle approaches me talking to himself so I pretend I’m laboring to make sure he doesn’t even attempt to mess with me…then I giggle to myself immediately after he passes thinking, “Wow, I just faked that I was laboring.”

7:50 – a cute runner dude steps out of the woods, smiles at me and says “Pit stop.”  I laugh and reply, “Suspected as much”

7:35, 7:25, 7:13 – “neato, Half Pace!”

8:35 for the last 1.1mi – I stopped the watch for a few minutes to chat with my pals Lara and Jeff who had a booth at the museum for a cycling event.

Average overall pace 8:10, even with the laggardly start.  The bitch is back.

The Week Ahead
is so light!  Day off today, then Tues is 8 mi w/3 x .75mi@10k, Wed is 6, 4 w/strides Thurs, Fri off, 4 w/strides Sat. and race!  Girlfriends will be arriving from Fri-Sat, so that’ll add another layer of fun.

I find it fascinating that I’m in the final days of a training cycle that had harder workouts than my last marathon cycle and in the suckiest of weather, but somehow I’m left thinking, “Really?  That’s it?”  This is nothing like how I feel at the end of marathon cycles: tired legs, hurting feet, the constant nervousness in the pit of my stomach…just wanting it to be O.V.E.R.  But this time, I feel like I’m just getting started.

Owe it to the weather, the new weight, the fun way this cycle was constructed, proper recovery weeks and rest days, plus knowing that if I screw this one up, I get to try again in 9 weeks…I really couldn’t be happier right now.

Reflective Headbands In Stock – Safe and Cute!
I now have reflective headbands, perfect for running in the dark.  You can get them in white or black. The reflective part is a silvery grey stripe down the center, so they look cool on their own, even if you don’t need the reflective bit.  I also got a cool camo design, a zebra-esque print and a couple other additions, so check out the latest and greatest!

Monday was a 7mi recovery @9:10

Tuesday was my Billat 30-30s, averaged 8:23 for the run.  The warmup miles were quite slow because I was still in creaky mode, but the fast bit went without incident, or rather, a tiny incident.  My inner quad got a little ping about 1/2 through the fast bits, not enough to make me stop but enough that I felt it on…

Wednesday’s run, which I’d planned for 9, but cut down to 6 @ 8:58, figuring better to be safe with the tweak and besides, there’s no loss cutting 3mi from a recovery, yet I’d have been sad to compromise a “real” run.

Thursday, (a.k.a. this morning) I was in a bad mood when I woke up, which is funny since I realized from a post I made last week on Facebook that last Thursday sucked upon waking, too.  But thanks to the beauty of running, like last week, I snapped out of it once I hit the road.  My schedule called for a 13-miler with tempo but because I didn’t want to tempt the inner quad, I figured I’d do regular GA pace and hit the ramp a few times by the museum as a quasi hill run.

I ended up only doing the ramp once and went on the other side of the museum/river for the first few miles, just for a fun change.  As the first couple miles went down, I noticed my energy level was increasing.  First mile was 8:52 but with each passing mile, I progressively got faster till my last 2 were 7:35s, bringing the whole run to avg 8:05.  My legs felt great, my mind felt great, it was just…great!

Tomorrow is a day off and then Saturday, some MP miles and Sunday, a 20.  We’ll see, since Saturday says “heavy rains/wind” – if so, I’ll just run easy.  I’m  in that nebulous place between full effort and slacker mode.  I know I’m putting in some good runs but I’m also not pushing as much as I could which, depending on the day, has me either “eh, who cares? it’s enough” or “oh shit, I’m going to suck horribly in Boston”.  Generally the former wins, the latter seems to be limited to Thursday waking up.

Newsletter

Sent #3 out and must apologize for a lack of editing on the Swedish stair piece, I don’t generally write “experiment” two times in one sentence.  And also, I’m not so sure that is a guy in the Jazzercise video, so my apologies to the woman with the horrible haircut.

Besides my first 14 days in a row, I ran my fastest 13-miler ever (8:26 avg. pace).  It was a progression run, last 4 miles averaged 8:04 (coupla 7:59s in there).

Lastly, you know how in the previous entry I said I was going to do 12, which would bring me a new mileage record of 59.25?  Well, I brazenly wrote that, thinking “I refuse to buckle under the pressure of making that 59.25 a 60, just to make it that beautiful, even, divisible by 10 number”.  Yeah, right.  New mileage record today: 60.25 (still uneven, but at least in the 6-0′s).

So today it’s Eagles vs. Cardinals (so exciting!) and we’re getting a big fat, greasy pizza (even more exciting!).  Then tomorrow I’m going to do a bona fide slow recovery run so that I can get some good intervals in on Tuesday.  Yeah, I’m continuing the “streak” though I’ll no longer be thinking of it as one, just me running until I feel like I need a break.

Beyond that?  Who knows.  At this moment, life is good and that’s all that matters.

Here’s Mcmillan’s Progression Run page, if you’re interested.

A great byproduct of the zippier runs I’ve been up to lately is that they’re introducing me to potential marathon goals for next Fall.   When I trained for Steamtown, the only time I ever ran marathon pace was on the two MP runs Pfitzinger had in his plan.  That pretty much sucks, because if you’re feeling like crap that day or even for that matter, feeling amazing, two tries seems like a dinky sample for such a huge event.

Which is why I’m an official race-pace convert now (and this extends to all race distances).  Whether it occurs in the form of intervals, tempos, steady state or part of a long run, I’m all about rehearsing race pace as part of the training block.

So it occurred to me that my faster easy runs these days double as a kind of audition process for future marathon pace.  I mean, not really truly quite yet, because it’s way too early, but it’s pretty cool to be running 8:xx and think, “yeah, gimme 11 months and I could do this for 26.2″.

Back to reality and the calendar, Hudson’s Half plan was supposed to begin this coming Sunday.  However, because my mileage and workouts are already ahead of his basebuilding phase, I’m going to jump into his plan a bit later, continuing on my own for now, though including his progression runs and hill repeats in the interim.

It’s strange, doing a truncated plan before a goal race – I’m so used to having 16 weeks laid out for me – but I realize that’s a mental thing, it’s not like I won’t be training well these next few weeks – six weeks, actually.  His threshold runs don’t even begin till week 7, so in essence, the main Hudson contribution will amount to a 10-week plan.

Looks like Excel and I will be spending some quality time together as we figure out how best to fill in the blanks.  Good thing I love that stuff.