This was a strange week. Training plan? What training plan?
Also, from a running standpoint, July is over. (There’s still a few more hours left as I write this, but I won’t be running again until August.) Good riddance. In spite of all the pain, I did manage my 4th highest monthly mileage ever, 146.6 miles. So there’s that.
Weight Check: 169.8, up 2.6 pounds from last week. Yikes. Now, I did my weigh-in before my Sunday run, but still, that’s not good. I went way overboard on the Mountain Dew this week, and I guess I didn’t run enough miles to make up for it. Next week is a new week, I guess.
| Day | Scheduled | Total Miles |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Easy 5 | 5.01 |
| Tuesday | 3 mile warm up, 8 x 20 second hill sprints with 1:30 recovery, 1 mile cool down | 5.77 |
| Thursday | Easy 7 | 5.01 |
| Saturday | 3 mile warm up, 4 x 1 mile at Marathon Pace (11:00/mile) with .25 mile recovery, 3 mile cool down | 10.78 |
| Sunday | Off | 3.11 |
Total: 29.68 miles
So, yeah, I deviated a bit from the schedule. I’ll explain.
Since I only needed 5 miles on Monday, I decided it was a great opportunity to get out of the heat and get on the treadmill. It may be mentally excruciating, but it’s climate controlled.
Tuesday I realized that hill sprints suck at any temperature. When it’s 77 degrees at 6:15 AM (Really?!?), I might as well do hill sprints.
The heat must have gotten to my brain, because for some reason I had it in my head that I had a 1.5 mile cool down instead of 1 mile. Oops.
Thursday, well, I was way overdue to have nature call during a run. I was right around the 5 mile mark and close to my house, so I went inside and did my business. When I was done, I realized I didn’t really have enough time for another two miles, so I called it there and figured I’d make up for those two miles eventually. Since I ran an extra half mile on Tuesday, I was actually only 1.5 miles in the hole.
Saturday was an interesting workout. I did manage to get under 11:00/mile for all 4 intervals. My times were 10:46, 10:40, 10:37, and 10:22. The 2nd interval being faster than the 1st was a happy accident, on the 3rd I tried a little harder to beat the 2nd, and on the last one, I was really pushing near the end to make sure it ended up being my fastest mile.
I briefly considered adding 1.5 miles to my cool down, but during the 2nd mile of the cool down, I realized that wasn’t going to happen. The heat and humidity weren’t quite as bad as the previous Saturday, but it was still no fun. I was pleased with my intervals, though.
And so, on Sunday, I went out for another run. I couldn’t justify going out there for just 1.5 miles, so I bumped it up to a 5K, so I ended up with about 1.6 miles more than my plan called for this week. It still qualifies as a step-back week.
Next Week:
Monday: Easy 6
Tuesday: 1.5 mile warm up, 4 x 200M REP w/200M recovery, 4 x 400M REP w/400M recovery, 4 x 200M REP w/200M recovery, 1.5 mile cool down
Thursday: Easy 7
Friday: Easy 5
Saturday 13 miles LSD
A couple of notes for next week. REP is short for repeats, and I’ll be aiming for a 9:00/mile pace for those. Also, unless something changes between now and Tuesday morning and I get access to a track, I’ll be running that workout in my neighborhood, and I’ll convert 200 and 400 meters to .13 and .25 miles.