Development

After my post about training smart I decided to go back and look at ALL of the training I have ever logged in order to examine it. Unfortunately I'm lacking a good amount of information around 2003-2005. I only have 10 weeks from 2003, NOTHING from 2004, 41 weeks from from 2005, and all from 2006-2009. Either way, I took what I had and threw it in a bar graph by week with a 10 week moving average trend line. When examining it I found what I had sort of expected to find:

1) I'm lacking in aerobic development (who isn't?)
2) It seems like I've never had a consistent block over 2 months at a decent volume.
3) There aren't any plateaus (this goes back to the 2nd observation) but I believe it identifies something much more important: that I might be increasing mileage at too fast a rate which leads to injury (the sharp declines).
4) Around 2006-2009 there have been 3 relatively big drops in volume which took awhile to build back from. Unfortunately this is happening to me right now in 2010, so that makes 4 big decreases.
5) This graph identifies the problem with the high school and collegiate systems. There is way too much racing, attempted peaking, and not enough time to focus on aerobic development. That's all I'll say about that though, I don't need to rant.

I'm sure there is more that I can interpret from this data, but I have only looked at it for about 10 minutes thus far. The main thing I figured I would find is that I really need to focus on a long term block of training. Like I've said before, this is the step I probably need to take for long term development. I figure this means a few months of just running and developing my lacking aerobic foundation. I think my focus needs to be steered away from any major racing or peaking (which can inhibit aerobic development) in order to get stronger and to allow myself to make that jump in training and racing which I've been waiting for. Here's the graph, what do you see (you can click on it to enlarge)?

Training SMART

Last night I was looking at my training from freshman year of college and was getting a bit frustrated with my lack of development over the years which I have expected. Freshman year I ran 8:36 (3k), 14:41 (5k), and 30:34 (10k). Thus far my PRs have only been slightly improved: 8:29 (1 year later), 14:35 (ran 1 and 2 years later), and 30:17 (run 2 years later). I find it unbelievable that these are still my best times. I have had many instances where I though I was in 14:0x-14:1x shape or mid 29 min shape only to get injured mid season and having to play catch up. Well...it's happening again. So something has to change, and I think I've determined a portion of what it is.

I've got very high expectations and aspirations of myself, and I try to train myself at the level I think I should be at. I never considered this a problem because it has always been manageable, I've never felt myself going to the well, and I've never trained to a point of breakdown. I try to keep it below that line of injury (over training) vs. under training. Yet, sometimes the expectations I have of my body aren't exactly reality. I simply don't have the background in my training for my body to be ready for the workload increase. For the fundamental stage of my training leading in to Shamrock I was hoping to make a big jump in terms of fitness and training level. Therefore I increased my weekly volume, workout volume and intensity. Before this block of training my highest week has been 105 miles, which I've done about 2-3 times. So, when I look back at the weeks before I got injured (97, 108, 109, 90, 116, 115) I think....of course you got injured. Not only was I trying to jump to a volume I've never really done (rather than building to it), but I was also training at that volume - doing workouts at a volume I've never done before (4x3mi, 15 mi tempo).

What did I lose sight of? SMART long term development. The reason I did this training is because I ultimately want to focus on the marathon, and I figured this would be a good "primer" with high volume and workouts semi-similar to marathon training. So, I didn't necessarily lose sight of long term development, I was just trying to rush it (not being smart). As I was looking at the training I had laid out for my specific phase of Shamrock I realized I was doing the same thing, trying to throw in a bunch of workouts. More or less trying to force my body to get where I want it to be as opposed to giving it time to fully and safely progress to that level.

As I rewrite my training coming in to Shamrock I am thinking about the bigger picture and where I want to see myself down the road. Aerobic development takes a lot of time (years), and that development gets sideline whenever I get injured. I won't be planning as many half marathon specific workouts in this phase because I think it's time that I start anew. It's time to focus on development rather than short term goals. I believe this is what will take away that plateau I have had during my collegiate career. This doesn't mean my goals for Shamrock have changed though - I have just taken away the tunnel vision. It would be great if I run around 65 min, and I fully believe I'm capable. Yet, I have a bigger picture in mind, so I need to focus on getting myself there.

Week Eight (January 17th to January 24th)

Sunday: 8 miles in 55:00 (6:53/mi)
Ran around Rochester. Didnt feel my knee until 25 minutes (but still felt it which annoyed me). It has definitely gotten better from the 2 days off as it was barely noticeable. Iced after the run. As the 15 mile tempo most likely was a cause of this injury I think there is another, being shoes. I've been running in Axioms and Summons for most of the time rather than the STs I usually run in. Today I started off 10 in STs for 10 minutes, but then switched to my Summons (STs are rubbing a tendon below my ankle). My stride was noticeably more jarring when in the Summons. So, I think I may need to stay with lighter and more flexible shoes.

Monday: Cross trained for 50 min
I went to the Y with Rach to cross train. I actually did a variation off stuff - biking for 30 minutes, elliptical a few minutes, and then aqua jogging for 20 minutes. I switched between things because my knee kept getting aggravated, after 30 minutes it was noticeable on the bike. So, I moved to the elliptical and it was immediately noticeable, so I went to the pool with Rach. I got 20 minutes in before it was, yet again, bother me...so I just treaded water as Rach was finishing up. Looks like I might have to take complete off days and not even cross train, that's pretty darn annoying.

Tuesday: OFF
Taking care of knee and groin.

Wednesday: OFF
Taking care of knee and groin.

Thursday: 8 miles in 55:00 (6:53/mi)
Great run but awful idea for a loop when injured. Real hilly so it didn't help the knee. Back in Cortland so I was able to run with a bunch of guys. Today I decided that I'll try to run through the issue since I was able to do so before with patella tendinitis (as long as I stay on flat surfaces unlike yesterday). Unfortunately no soft surfaces are available, so that might be a problem...we'll see. Did core and strength later.

Friday: 10 miles in 68:00 (6:48/mi) 10:30am - Finally feel like I'm back running. It seems like I'm just suffering from patella tendinitis / runners knee. I think its a mix of the shoes I'm running in and the fact that Ive been running on the same side of the road all the time, Ive noticed when I go on the other side the opposite slant doesn't hurt the knee as much. It hurt for the first 5 minutes in, but then once it got warmed up it was only slightly noticeable. Really good sign as this indicates I'm able to run through it. I wish I had payed more attention to what it was, because I may not have had to take all this time off. Granted it seems to have helped my groin slightly, which is still noticeable. Ive still got 57 days to go to Shamrock, as long as this is the only major setback Ill be good to go.

Saturday: Sort of OFF
My knee hurt for the first 10 minutes, but sort of went away for the next 10. I was running with Justin, Stermer and Curry who were doing a workout. So I stopped with them for a couple minutes as they were changing in to spikes. Glad I did because as I started running again my hip started popping and was hurting a bit - looks like an IT problem from overcompensation. I guess this means I should be smart and take some actual time off. The good news is that I biked next to the guys today as the did their workout and it didn't bother my knee. So I guess actual cycling (and not a stationary bike) doesn't bother me knee.

Week Summary: This week sure took a hit. Nothing special to report. I think I'm going to focus on biking for all of next week to make sure I fully recover. Hopefully that time will help my groin as well. All of the sudden I turned in to a mess!

26 miles
3 hours
Primary: none
Secondary: none
Runs: 3
Off: 4

Week Seven (January 10th to January 16th)

Sunday: 9.1 miles in 57:30 (6:19/mi)
11:00am - Just an out and back around town. Quads still feeling fatigued from that workout. A bit surprised it has taken so much out of my legs.

Monday: AM - 9.1 miles in 60:00 (6:36/mi) PM - 7 miles in 44:30 (6:21/mi)
9:00am - Same out and back as yesterday. Legs still lethargic, figured I could be stale because I haven't done strides in awhile due to the groin so I decided to do 6x12s hill sprints and 4 strides after. That let me test out the groin too, it seemed like the sprints didn't effect it much.
4:00pm - Legs not as lethargic as this morning, maybe the strides in the morning helped. Did 5 more at the end of this run.

Tuesday: Primary - 18.5 miles in 1:46.30 (5:45/mi)
10:00am - Started out with form drills and AI stretching before my warm up. Quite a workout. Did a 15 minute warm up in to a 15.2 mile at about marathon effort. I did this on a 3.8 mile loop (so 4 loops) that has a 200m gradual uphill and another gradual 200m downhill at the start and then a gradual 800m uphill at the end. In between that it is all flat and straight. Unfortunately that meant I had a head wind of 10-15mph for half of the entire workout is much more noticeable when you're trying to run a decent pace. Its funny how that laps ranged in effort - The first lap was easy, the second lap was hard, the third lap was easy and the fourth lap just sucked. Every lap was pretty manageable, and I tried to increase my effort each time (even if the pace didn't indicate it due to the random wind gusts). Except for the last lap I was just enduring, the combination of my quads being extremely fatigued (as well as myself) and the wind being much more unforgiving led to the slowest lap. Overall I'm still happy, I got the effort and duration in. This was also my longest workout by 3 miles. My second longest workout before this was the 4x3mi I did which was also in this training block. I actually didn't feel all that bad on the cool down aside from an upset stomach. I did a couple strides and was able to get turning over pretty well.
Splits: 21:15, 20:57, 20:59, 21:24 = 1:24.35
15.2 miles in 1:24.35 = 5:33.7/mi.

Note: I calculated a known split of the first portion of each lap which was 7:40-8min (almost 1.5mi) in to see what my pace was without the wind:
1st lap: 5:22/mi
2nd lap: 5:14/mi
3rd lap: 5:12/mi
4th lap: 5:16/mi

So this is pretty negligible in terms of meaning since effort is effort, but I just wanted a relative idea of what my effort accounted to since I like looking at numbers.

Wednesday: 7.5 miles in 53:00 (7:04/mi)
11:00am - Took it real easy. I was feeling fine after yesterday, actually better than compared to last weeks workout surprisingly. My right knee was slightly sore through the run, so I decided to not double.

Thursday: AM - 8 miles in 54:40 (6:40/mi) PM - 7 miles in 45:30 (6:31/mi)
10:00am - Easy again. The knee was only slightly noticeable, so I wasn't worried about it all that much. Felt pretty good.
4:00pm - My knee was definitely more noticeable, even 30s in. I decided to keep going to see how it did as I kept running. It slowly went away, but definitely was more noticeable which wasn't good. Therefore I decided to take a couple days off.

note: I believe this day is where my knee problems really started, if I had taken today off it probably wouldn't have gotten as aggravated and progressed as much as it has.

Friday: OFF
Took today off to take care of the knee.

Saturday: OFF
Took today off to take care of the knee.

Week Summary:
This week started off well and ended not so well. The groin is still very noticeable, but I still have yet to determine if it actually gets effected by my running - it hasn't gotten better, but hasn't gotten worse either. Whereas this knee thing that started up seems to be the largest problem. I believe it's patella tendinitis since it's right below the knee, and the impact effects it the most. However, on a positive note I was glad with the workout I got in. This is the workout which my fundamental phase was building up to, and it was pretty manageable. As mentioned, it definitely was a new experience as that last lap was a rough one. My plans for next week will have to be pushed back or changed as the knee has to be taken care of first and foremost. We'll see how that goes.
66.2 miles
7:00 hours
Primary: 15.2 miles @ marathon effort
Secondary: None
Runs: 7
Off: 2

Training by Effort

On a run a couple weeks ago I was contemplating my training and some of the workouts I wanted to do during my half marathon specific phase. When planning workouts I have a couple of primary considerations which take in to account many subcategories. For example a primary consideration being what type of training stimulus you want to achieve. The subcategories being the general planning of a workout all revolving around how to achieve that training stimulus: 1) Do you want to do a long tempo, a fartlek, hills, intervals or repeats? 2) What should the volume of the workout/amount of reps or sets be? 3)How much recovery do you want between sets or intervals? - and so on....

When I was planning the workouts I was always taking in to consideration the pace which I wanted to be doing them at. I have a goal of running 65 minutes in the Shamrock Half, so naturally my goal pace is 4:57.x per mile for my half marathon specific workouts. As my brain kept churning through my training plans one idea surfaced - why train at a specific pace? At this point in my training as I'm starting up my specific phase goal pace may be a bit tough to maintain. Over time the goal is of course to make it manageable and comfortable. Yet, what if, through a couple weeks or months of training my body has adapted to that stimulus (and is ready for another)? Then, by continually running 4:57 pace for my key workouts I'm almost assuring myself of a couple things: 1) Come race day I should be confident in my ability to run 65 minutes...but...2) I can also be confident that I won't exactly have a "breakthrough" race, as I haven't necessarily been training myself for the possibility.

Now this isn't to say that you can't have breakthrough races while doing paced workouts, I just believe it's a bit more rare. The one thing I miss about being a young, high school runner is that I was naive and ignorant about my training and ability. I am of course still a bit naive, I always will be...you can always learn something new. Yet, I have lost a bit of that ignorance in training which can, sometimes, be bliss. I never did paced workouts in high school, I just ran hard during workouts and that was that. This ignorance led to some breakthrough races one being a 4:23 mile senior year with my previous personal best having been 4:32. This is what I think training by a specific race effort can bring. You have that little bit of ignorance which can be a savior in injury prevention or a step forward in a race that meets an aspiration (when I set goals I always set an expectation and an aspiration). The reason I say it can prevent injuries is because some people have the habit of training at a level above where they should be at the moment. Now, I'm not saying one shouldn't train at a higher level than their current fitness (that's how you improve...). Yet, sometimes people get a little carried away. The name of the game in long distance running is consistency, and that comes from intelligent training through listening to your body. In terms of exceeding expectations (and meeting aspirations) sometimes training at a goal pace can put you in a bit of a rut. Or, as I said before it could cause a plateau in training if your body has already adapted to the stimulus.

This also makes workouts a bit more enjoyable since you aren't as stressed if you aren't hitting times. After all, even if you can't hit paces during a workout it doesn't mean that you didn't achieve the training stimulus you were going for. It's always important to consider the human factor. Some days running one pace can be quite comfortable, while other days it can be quite the opposite. On those days when it's difficult to run a certain pace the purpose of the workout may be ruined if you overly tax yourself to do so. Anyways, those are my thoughts for now. These ideas may be a bit scattered since I was typing as thoughts came to me, so if anyone has a question about anything I said let me know.

Week Six (Janurary 3rd toJanuary 9th)

Sunday (1/3): 10 miles in 1:10.00 (7:00/mi)

10:30am - Weather pretty bad out, so I just chose to do one run. The wind and slush was no fun. At night after this run I realized my groin/adductors got pulled or something. Must have been from running in the slush. Never noticed it during the run, but it really tightened up by the evening.

Monday (1/4): AM - 13.6 miles in 1:23.00 (6:06/mi) PM - 6.5 miles in 38:30 (5:55/mi)

10:00am - The first few minutes of this were easy just to make sure my adductors were okay. Never really bothered me as I ran which was good. A nice, moderate progression to a steady pace. I feel like this effort is what a maintenance run should be like, so my maintenance pace might be a little faster than this (in good conditions).

3:30pm - A little carried away since it was nice to run on clear roads. First half 5:55/mi, next half 5:40/mi. So, it was probably a faster average, but I like to round down the distance a little. Threw in 5 strides towards the end, felt pretty good.

Tuesday (1/5): 19.5 miles in 1:59.30 (6:08/mi)

9:30am - Ran with Shamus and Justin in BH. Justin went 13 and Shamus went 17, then I added on miles at ~half marathon effort at the end. The whole run was on a 4.2 mile loop which was actually pretty fun. The whole run was a moderate progression. The first hard mile was in to the wind, the 2nd was with the wind. A little bit of jogging after for a cooldown. Solid run.

4.2 miles loops - 27:36 (6:34/mi), 26:09 (6:13/mi), 25:35 (6:05/mi), 25:04 (5:58/mi)

2 mile - 10:14 (5:24, 4:50)

Supplemental - Did core, strength, form drills and plyos (first time in awhile). The plyos aggravated my adductors a bit.

Wednsday (1/6): AM - 10.2 miles in 1:06.30 (6:31/mi) PM - 7 miles in 47:30 (6:47/mi)

 11:00am - Ran with Wager around his house. Legs a bit sore in the beginning from the lifting, but loosened up during the run. The left side of my left ankle had some sharp pains towards the end which really annoyed me. It seems like it might have been from the STs (shoes) yesterday.

4:00pm - Just an easy run, my ankle thing didn't bother me as much (apparently the Summons don't aggravate it as much).

Thursday (1/7): 14.6 miles in 1:33.00 (6:22/mi)

 3:00pm - A moderately progressive pseudo long run - I started out real easy, then got down to 5:25 for the last miles. It was a great day to run (despite the darn wind) and went by pretty fast. I chose a route with some decent hills since I have been doing to many flat runs recently.

Friday (1/8): AM (Primary) - 12.8 miles in 1:14.40 (5:50/mi) PM - 6 miles in 43:00 (7:10/mi)

 11:00pm - Today's workout was relatively varied. It was 9.5 miles (the distance the loop ended up being) of ~marathon effort with 5x(60s on, 30s off) at 20 minutes and 40 minutes in. The 60s on portions were around 10k-half marathon effort. Then the last 1.2 miles were up a hill with a varied gradient of 4-20% (generally over 10% most of the time). I averaged 5:27/mi for the first 8.3 miles and then 7:00/mi for the uphill portion...and I was hard working on it. It wasn't a fast workout by any means, but I was able to get some pace changes, high end aerobic work and strength work. I figure this is a relatively ideal type of workout for the fundamental stage. The warm up was a 1 mile jog and the cool down was a little over 2 miles. Wore my summons the whole time, never hurt my ankle. My adductors were noticeable in the beginning of the run, but went away rather quickly.

4:30pm - A real easy recovery run, enjoyed it. Upper quads a bit sore from this afternoon.

Supplemental: Did core and strength work at night followed by some AI stretching.

Saturday (1/9): AM - 9.1 miles in 58:00 (6:22/mi) PM - 6.3 miles in 42:30 (6:44/mi)

10:00am - Just ran by feel...Qauds a bit fatigued from yesterday still. Temperature was back to the negatives and windy which was no fun.

4:30pm - Another easy run. The wind picked up for this run so that was a little bit annoying. My legs are still fatigued as expected.

Week Summary:

 Another solid week. This week I tried to make sure my maintenance pace was a little quicker than it has previously been . I'd like to make a distinguishable difference between my maintenance days and recovery days, as I haven't in the past - most runs are sort of in between at times. The primary went well as I was able to touch on a few different systems in one workout. I believe that the hilly pseudo LR the day before the primary fatigued me a little bit for the workout. This isn't as big a deal right now, but it's something that shouldn't happen during the specific day - I just have to plan my days better. I was happy with the LR as I would like most of my LRs to double as semi-high end aerobic "workouts". The only problem with this week was the possible straining of my adductors from running in the snow on the first day of the week. Throughout the week it really hasn't gotten all that better, but it hasn't gotten any worse at all either. The problem with my left foot also became a bit more noticeable when running, and it's a little swollen. I just have to become more focused with the icing.

115.6 miles

12:14 hrs

Primary: 9.5 mile continuous AT. 5x(60s/30s) at 20 min and 40 min. Last 1.2 miles uphill.

Secondary: Modified LR, moderately progressive w/ last 2 miles at HM effort.

11 runs

Week Five (December 27th to January 2nd)

Sunday (12/27): 18.1 miles in 2:00.30 (6:39/mi)

9:00am – Met up with Justin and Jimmy to do our LR. Ran some of the loops we used to do in high school which was pretty cool. Took it easy and was glad to do so as my upper quads were pretty tired from yesterdays little workout. As time went on I was feeling better, and once we all broke off I decided to start a push around 100min. Ended up doing a 21 min push for exactly 4 miles (5:29/mi). It was pretty progressive, as I was moving along well towards the end – probably around 5:10ish pace. I passed a cyclist and heard him mumble “are you kidding me”. That always helps the motivation. Good run and nice weather for it. I'm start to throw in a couple 20 milers a few weeks later - mainly when I hit my peak weeks for volume. As far as I'm concerned 17-18 miles every 7 days is good enough for me. I feel like if I want to start upping my LR's to 20 miles, then I should probably extend the rest in between to 10 days - anyways a LR every 7 days isn't completely necessary.

Monday (12/28): 13 miles in 1:28.00 (6:46/mi)

 Was at my dads with Rach. I joined her for her 4 miles of tempo, and then once she was done and went back to the house I continued on to run some more as she was only doing 7 miles or so. My upper quads were relatively sore, probably this time from the LR and no the secondary on Saturday. 6 strides towards the end of the run. The sun was setting towards the end of the run which was great because it looked really cool.

Tuesday (12/29): AM (Primary) -  11 miles in 1:03.20 (5:45/mi) PM - 7 miles in 43:30 (6:13/mi)

10:00am - Did a progressive 10 miler with Shamus, and Jared did 6 with us. The total run was 11 miles as we did a half mile warm up and cooldown to and from the 3 mile loop we ran on. It was just supposed to be a high end aerobic run, so more like a maintenance plus pace. At the end of the 3rd loop Shamus and I went a half mile out and turned back to make it 10. It was a controlled run and the whole time we were running faster than anticipated. Especially for the last mile which was 5:01-2. We were also talking the entire time, so it was obviously relatively relaxed. The wind was a steady 20 mph with gusts of 50 degrees bringing the wind chill down to -15*. Frankly, I didnt think it was all that bad aside from the frozen face, and we never encountered any terrible gusts.
Summary: 17:37.8, 16:54.4, 16:23.6, 5:01.6 = 10 miles in 55:57.4 (5:35.7/mi)

4:00pm – Just ran on my own. Started off easy and as I warmed up dropped the pace slightly. 6 quick strides towards the end as ins and outs. My IT bands were a bit sore in the beginning, but as I ran faster it sort of helped loosen them up.

Wednesday (12/30): AM - 10.6 miles in 1:04.30 (6:05/mi) PM - 7.7 miles in 56:00 (7:16/mi)

8:30am - I started off real easy since my legs were feeling pretty lethargic and stiff. Once I was feeling a little normal I threw in a 30s stride which felt pretty good. I then decided to do a 30s stride every 5 minutes to break up the run. It helped to make the run go by faster. I ended up doing 10 of them by the end of the run.
Note: Left foot thing was very noticeable for 20 minutes of the run, but slowly went away/got numb. This leads me to believe its not a neuroma as a nerve issue wouldn't numb like that (or that quickly).
4:30pm - Ran 6 miles with Rach then tacked on an extra 10 minutes. Nice to take it easy. Both achilles slightly sore to the touch after, gotta focus on making sure that they don't get worse. AI after and epsom salt bath which helped the achilles, soreness gone.

Thursday (12/31): AM - 12 miles in 1:22.00 (6:50/mi) PM - 6.1 miles in 40:20 (6:37/mi)

10:00am - Rach and I ran at the same time. It had started snowing once we started running, so there was a dusting of snow on the roads. This actually wasn't bad at all, until it turned in to slush. Nevertheless an okay run, sort of went by slow though. I tacked on more after Rach finished.
4:30pm - Ran with Jerry and Justin. An out and back on Brandle. The roads were better than in the morning. We just cruised and talked. Nice to run with people. Felt like the run was quicker than it actually was.
Note - previous 7 day volume @ 118.2 miles, highest ever!

Friday (1/1/10): 13.9 miles in 1:36.00 (6:54/mi)

10:00am - Started out a tad bit rough due to some sleep deprivation since I had trouble sleeping (and of course didn't get to bed until ~2am). Running with a group of guys I haven't run with in awhile sure helped out as well. Everyone broke off at different times, so I ended up doing about 20-30 minutes on my own. During this time I went to a hill and did 10x12s hill sprints, with active recovery to make it a circuit. I did 2 strides after on the way back to Justins house, but they felt awful after the hill sprints so I stopped.
 

Saturday (1/2): AM - 6 miles in 42:30 (7:05/mi) PM - 10.6 miles in 1:10.30 (6:39/mi)
10:00am - An easy run down Brandle and back. The roads were pretty bad at this point - Brandle had a couple snow drifts that took up the width of the road, were about 20-30m long and 2' high. Those were a bit rough to run through. The way back sucked since it was in to the wind which was a bit cold and...windy. Chose to do the shorter run early since Rach was leaving this afternoon and I wanted to have a little more time to hang out with her.
5:30pm - Didn't plan on running this late...This run was one of the more frustrating ones thus far (for the winter). Had to stay around town to run under lights since it was dark out. The wind was relentless, and it was about -5* out. The worst part was probably the first 10 minutes though, on account that after you get used to it, it doesn't really get any worse. Would have really liked to get a workout in today but there were a lot of setbacks leading to me not being able to get a workout in. The weather of course being on of these. I found myself thinking about how much better my training may be if I didn't live in the northeast - it got me frustrated so I stopped thinking about it.

Week Summary:

 Again, not a bad week. Highest volume for a training week thus far which is nice. I tried to make sure a few of my maintenance runs were decently fast, just because I'm running more doesn't mean it needs to be LSD (long, slow, distance). This week ended up sort of being a down week in terms of workout intensity, it wasn't planned but it could be helpful in allowing my body to absorb the training I've been doing. Next week the volume will be similar, but the intensity will be increased (in terms of workouts). This volume is still very manageable, which means I'll probably hit around 120 for my peak of the training block (with workouts of course). The whole purpose of this training block is to try and push my training to another level and see how I react. I hope to average around 105 mpw, with a large variety of intensive workouts. 85 mpw is the highest I've averaged for a season, and the workouts I'm doing now are much higher in volume, while still doing some at the same pace (since during the specific period most of my secondaries will be 5k/10k based workouts.

116 miles
12:47 hrs
Primary: 10 mile progressive AT
Secondary: None
11 runs

Yearly Review:
3921 miles in 2009
10.74 mpd avg
75.2 mpw avg