Monday, July 31, 2017

Training Blog July 24 to 30, 2017 Getting Stronger...

Monday noon road 10 miles 1:08:34, tired, spent most of the day catching up on yard work and errands...

Tuesday AM 5.3 miles with Melissa and Uta, 39:25
PM at rail trail 3 mile warm up, drills and strides, 4x2 miles with 2mins of drills recovery, 10:22, 10:27, 10:15, 10:09.  Actually started to feel good by the last one which was nice.  Getting a bit of endurance back.  2.2 mile cool down

Wednesday AM 7.1 miles in 54:24, pacing Melissa through her 2x2 mile, in 12:40 and 1xhalf mile in 2:55 workout.  We also did some drills and strides during this.
PM 8.1 miles on roads solo, 55:27

Thursday AM at Phillips Academy, 3 warm up, drills, strides, 10x300m with 300m jog, ie full recovery and then some.  This is muscular work so the first one basically felt the same as the last one except I had bit of fatigue in the quads and calves, no acid burn etc...  Averaged 46.9 with fastest at 46.5 and slowest at 47.3, jogs were very slow, mostly over 2mins.  3 mile cool down

Full disclosure I went fishing instead of doing a second run, pretty lazy choice but it was a really nice afternoon and I'm trying not to go too crazy with the mileage...

Friday AM road 10 mile solo, 1:05:37
PM 5.1 miles around Phillips fields with Melissa and Uta, 42:11

Saturday PM 3 warm up, drills and strides, 5x mile on rail trail, 5:21, 5:08, 4:59, 4:52, 4:50.  Goal was to be in the 5:20's then 10's then 0's then 50's then 40's.  Given my current 5k fitness, ~15:00 that was a fairly big ask and by being on the low end of the first 4 reps I pretty much screwed myself.   The first 3 actually felt pretty good I was even having delusions of grandeur that I would bust out a 6th rep in the 4:30's but by the half mile in the 4th rep the reality that running much under 5min pace is pretty hard for me right now settled in.  Rests were 2mins with drills. Actually the rests were exactly 1:59 for every one which I find a little funny, I'm not usually that consistent. 3 mile cool down.

Sunday AM with Melissa on rail trail.  This was here long run/workout.  So we ran 11.6 miles with no stopping 3 miles easy as warm up, then 5 miles of 3/4 in the 4:30's, 6:0's pace, with 1/4 slow jog recovery then 3.6 miles easy at the end, 1:30:16 for the whole thing.
PM road 8.2 solo, 55:19, saw a deer very close up, about 15 feet.  Finished off a good week for wildlife.

Summary 102 miles for the week, three nice workouts.  I'm starting to get to a point where I can see my body wanting to get back to 'normal' paces and abilities.  I'm not there yet but hopefully over the next few weeks it will happen.
  The weather this week was crazy nice, probably the nicest whole week I have ever trained through in a Massachusetts summer.  Generally we have very high humidity and very high dew points so that even 80 degrees tends to feel like a death march.  This week not only was the temp in the high seventies and low 80's but it felt cool.  It really was a nice break.  It looks like the humidity is going to be back this week so we'll see how I handle it.  Generally it doesn't bother me too much for a single session but it grinds me down and I have to start putting in more rest days.  We are however coming into August and often the mornings and evenings are cooler in August giving a chance to work around the heat more effectively.
  This week I'm going to do a couple of workouts and a 5k race.  I'm planning on trying to start racing into shape over the course of this month.  Just hopping into some local races and running hard.  I'm ready for that.  I still don't know for sure what I'll be focused on for the fall, that is going to depend on how the next 6 to 8 weeks go but it is time to start trying to hurt a little for real.
  This weekends race will be the John Leclerc Memorial Wind Turbine 5k in my hometown of Templeton, MA.  It raises money for cross country program which was a power house for many years but fell on hard times right after I graduated with the addition of a lot of other sports, Narragansett is a tiny school.  From the programs inception in 1963 through to 1998 they never had a losing season and won state titles in 1966, 1979, 1983, 1995, 1996.  The titles in '79 and '83 were when Massachusetts didn't have divisions so that was beating schools that were 10 to 20 times larger. Since then they have struggled.
   My expectations are pretty low.  I'm going to aim for 15:00 but I'm not feeling confident that I'll be able to run that.


'back in the day' front page of the local paper from the first state champion team I was on at Narragansett

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