Weekly Report

I've had a busy week of work and running and tonight is the first night I've had to sit down and catch up on my blogging.

I covered 27.5 miles last week to bring my total for the year up to 366.75. Looking at my log I am almost 40 miles behind from this time last year. I also hadn't run a half marathon in 1:39:21 either. It looks like I was still training with my heart rate monitor too and it looks like it was starting to piss me off quite a bit.

Monday afternoon I got home from work, changed into my trainers and headed out into the 75 degree temps for a set of 2 x 1 mile at tempo pace (6:32). This was supposed to be a "comfortably hard" effort. Usually the problem with the practice is figuring out what the pace feels like and staying with it as it usually feels pretty pretty relaxed.

I ran a mile warm-up in 8:13.50 and then did a mile of eight 40 step pick-ups in 7:40.71. I stopped for 4:20 to stretch, sip some water and change into my flats. I started my first mile repeat on my mile course that winds through my neighborhood and noticed that I hit my quarter split in 1:34. I slowed down, at least I thought I did, and hit the half in 3:12. I apparently mistook what sewer grate is actually the 3/4 mark, AGAIN, and kicked it in with a bit too much mustard and a time of 6:19.18.

6:19.18 is about 13 seconds faster than I really wanted to run and I decided against a repeat performance on the next rep as I didn't want to blow myself out for my 5K this weekend. I didn't feel like I was straining too much but running faster than you really need to too often tends to defeat the purpose of training to race. I'd rather race well than blow my practice times away.

I gave myself 1:09 to recover and sip some water and then basically repeated my first mile up until the 800 when I reined myself in and finished in 6:25.18. That one actually felt alright.

I changed my shoes and sipped some water and them ran a mile cool down in 8:19.

Tuesday, after returning from work, I ran five miles in the 78 degree heat in a relaxed 40:29. I had mile splits of 8:11, 8:12, 8:04, 8:09 and 7:53.

Wednesday, I did some yoga and hamstring presses.

Thursday, I worked late and then vegged out with my son.

Tonight I got another fiver completed, before the storm, in 40:42 with splits of 8:23, 8:23, 8:02, 8:10 and 7:44. The wind picked up pretty hard the last mile and blew my back to my house. Within 10-15 minutes of getting back it was storming.

Tomorrow I am going to run the I Care For Residents 5K in Sherman. I don't know how big the race is going to be or how fast the course is but I would like to run 19:30 - 19:59 depending on who I've got to push/pull me. I'm not expecting to win the race but stranger things have happened. . . most notably my victory at the Springfield Housing Authority Turkey Trot 5K in 2006. I was hoping that more people would show up for that one but I think there were about 12 and I led wire-to-wire and won by over a minute. I don't think anyone was more surprised than I was.

I'll try to get a race report up before I leave for Peoria Saturday afternoon but it will probably be brief.

My pal IronTim is running the Country Music Marathon tomorrow with a goal time of 3:20. He ran 1:34 at the Lincoln Memorial and if you double his time and add ten minutes that gives you 3:18 and change for a marathon prediction. I think he can do it.

Good luck to everyone racing tomorrow!