Glad to say, I’m truly happy to be training again.  I’ve been messing with the schedule, tweaking it like mad, but only by adding miles. I like the way the simple workouts look for now, so no edits for those aside from the mileage padding.  That might change as we get closer to the race because 6 or 8×800 (Yasso, hello) would probably be happier morphing into the same distances worth of 1200s or 1000s, but for now…all good.

This is what I’ve tentatively got on tap for the month of January. Here’s the original plan so you can see how it compares. I’ve entered on week 4.

What I've got planned plus what I've done up till Jan. 5th.

I took an extra day off on Sunday because it was 12 degrees windchill with 30mph winds and I was all, “screw this, training starts tomorrow!”  So that was my last day of  vacation.

Today’s run was 4 x 1/4 mi hill repeats, 9.4 miles total.  I had a great time doing them though it was cold and windy (21 windchill, admittedly not quite as bad as many of you have it).  The only crappy part was coming home and seeing the last time I did reps on that hill, I did 7 of them and was 30 seconds faster.  But it was 62 degrees that day and 3 weeks out from Philly.  Plus, I’ve been running easy for the last 6 weeks, so I’m fine with it.

I had a funny mini-freakout after I read Robert’s comment on the last post “Only three 20’s all training period?”  Suddenly, I was scrambling to add another 20, then I realized how silly it was.  There is nothing magical about a 19 vs. a 20 (if we lived in Europe, we’d be doing 30k Long Runs…18.4 miles) so for all intents and purposes, three 20s and a 19 make for 4 proper long runs.  Looks fine to me.  Besides, my lovely 22,22,24 and 20 for Philly didn’t even get put to the test since I started walking at mile 18.

More important to me is putting mid-long runs in there for general endurance.  Though ok, I penciled in a tentative extra 20 in there if the weather’s great and I feel like it, but probably not.

February at this point looks like 52 (cutback),63,69,73, then March will be 60 (cutback), 73, 54 (Shamrock Half), 74 and then April’s first week is 60, then taper.  I’ll still be messing around as it goes, but this gives you an idea of how I’ve modified the mileage.

On the Heart Rate front, it continues to be wonky, but I’ve now accepted it as a permanent part of the picture.  Instead of lamenting and comparing the past, I’m going to wear it but use the current readings as baseline.  As long as it shows natural  improvement with the passing weeks, everything’s A-OK.  The underlying quandary I’ve had has been whether to slow my runs down to make for a “better” HR.  But they’d end up being slower than last January when I was a much slower runner, so I’m using effort as the main guide and the monitor to note  trends.

That’s it for now, I’ll be back for more blather in a few days.  Have some fabulous runs!

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