Week in the Rearview Mirror: January 22 - January 28, 2012

 

This was a good solid week, and another one where it just good doing it (at least for the most part). I had planned on doing an 18- 20 mile long run on Saturday, but opted to do it in three parts within 24 hours instead. Just judging by the way I'm feeling this morning (Sunday), I would say that things worked pretty well. While I'm a bit stiff, it is nothing like it was with a single run of that length, and I actually feel pretty good.

I have more than just a feeling that my friend Paul is right in that one of the reasons these long runs are "knocking the snot out of me" is that I'm just not running them slowly enough. I would personally be THRILLED with a first marathon time between 4:00 and 4:15, and that would be roughly a 9:43 pace or better. I just noted that my last three long runs were at an average pace of 9:24, 9:22, and 9:36 respectively. In other words, I'm not doing them right... I'm essentially "racing" them.

Going forward, I'm going to HAVE to slow down on these, even if that means inserting some walk breaks for no other reason than to just slow me down. I'm NOT a fan of inserting walk breaks, since I personally find it harder to start running again than to just keep running. But I DO have to slow down on these. Thanks for pointing out where I might have been going wrong Paul...odds are you were spot-on.

The good news though is that as a consequence of having this type of week, I've not only set a personal record for the number of training miles run in a week, but I've already put more training miles in for January than any month to date since I started back to running last summer !

Here is what last week looked like...

Day	Activity	Distance (in miles)
Sunday	Walking	5.02
	Cycling	10.69
Monday	Rest Day
Tuesday	Elliptical	0.77
	Running	10.26
	Walking	1.06
Wednesday	Rest Day
Thursday	Walking	0.64
	Running	4.09
Friday	Running	6.02
Saturday	Elliptical	0.81
	Running	8.05
	Running	6.15

These are my time and distance totals for the week:

Activity	Time Total	Distance Total (in miles)
Running	5:14:12	34.57
Walking	1:38:03	5.66
Cycling	0:42:20	10.69
Elliptical	0:20:00	1.58
Overall Total	7:54:35	52.50

Only 27 days till the Cowtown Marathon...I'm am SO looking forward to it. No more really long runs or days are planned, with just some solid 3 to 7 mile runs planned as I'm able to throughout the weeks. That should provide a nice taper as long as I don't press the speed on the running days, and then take it a bit easier the week of the marathon. .

Happy Running Everyone !!!