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