Running Shorts

Monday:  2 miles -- slow Tuesday: 3 miles -- slow Wednesday: Off Thursday: 8 miles Friday: 12 miles in 1:20:28 Saturday: 7 mile marathon effort tempo in 41:17 Sunday: Off TOTAL : 32 miles in 5 days Well this week was slightly less sucky. I had made up my mind to start off this week running, and I did on Monday and Tuesday...but all I had energy for was 2 and 3 miles, respectively. I was spent after each one. But hey, when you can run in a t-shirt in February, you take advantage of it. By Wednesday I knew I needed to be responsive and take the day off, and on Thursday I felt exponentially better. Not back to normal energy levels, but at least enough to run something of substance. Same deal with Friday. One of the keys to establishing aerobic endurance is to alternate longer, slower days with shorter, faster days (see Lydiard explained here ). That's going to be my general plan going forward, and since I had felt a kind of normalcy back in my running I wanted to p...

Monday:  Sick - no run Tuesday:  Sick - no run Wednesday:  Sick - no run Thursday:  Sick - no run Friday: 4 miles in 27:22 - Felt totally depleted Saturday:  Sick - no run Sunday:  Sick - no run TOTAL : 4 miles on 1 day of running Well this week sucked. What started last weekend just got worse all week. I had (still have) a cough I can't shake and I've been just totally drained of energy. It's just the kind of thing that there's no point in trying to train through. So now there's basically two months to race day, and my cram training is already off the rails. That's okay, because I've been re-evaluating my plan and I'll be making adjustments. I'm still working out the nuts and bolts, but here are the general focuses, in order of importance: Aerobic endurance , mostly at lower intensities (up to but generally not beyond Aerobic Threshold, or marathon effort). I'm a very slow twitch runner and I know I respond well to the consist...

Monday:  3 w/u; 2 x 6 x diagonals (4 min jog between sets), 1k in 3:02, 2 c/d Tuesday: Easy hour of running Wednesday: Planned off day Thursday: One hour of running with 5 surges by feeling in the second half Friday: 10 min up, 57 min marathon effort tempo, 1 mile c/d Saturday:  Very easy 8 recovery Sunday: Planned long run, but sick in the chest so no run today TOTAL : 48 miles on 5 days Well, for my first week back in a while this was...passable. I was almost really happy with it until I got sick over the weekend, but there's nothing you can do about that. Better to miss a day or two than to have a cold just drag on. Usually a head cold is fine to run through, but a nasty cough is something not to mess with. Monday's workout was exactly what I needed, both mentally and physically. Diagonals are a popular mid-distance workout in Kenya, and it consists of running diagonally from flag to flag across a soccer field, with a jog across the baseline for recovery. Th...

Welp, it's 10 weeks 'til marathon race day and I haven't run for the past two. As per usual (I feel like I've been saying this a lot) my Achilles was flaring up and small breaks weren't helping it, so I just decided to shut down for a couple weeks and hope that'll calm it down. January started with promise, but ended up being a pretty crappy month of training. So now I'm going to see what I can put together for this final stretch. In a weird sort of way, I'm actually kind of optimistic for the rest of training. Here's why: 1. Over the past two years of fighting my Achilles, I've learned that I can sustain decent training for about 8-12 weeks. Any more than that and things start to break down, but any less and I can't get into a decent rhythm. So 10 weeks to Boston? Perfect. 2. I've also overdone marathon training in the past (even just one too-hard workout or race without proper recovery can leave you crashing at the finish). But wi...