Week In Review: Sept 19 - Sept 25

This is my weekly training journal. Including it in the blog gives me a little extra accountability in the mileage department & helps me stick to my schedule. :)

7 Weeks to Clarksburg Half Marathon

10 Weeks to Cal International Marathon

After finishing my long run Sunday feeling pretty trashed & with a painful tendon in my left leg, I decided to take both Monday and Tuesday off. That week was my highest mileage in a very long time with some tough runs, plus this week was already scheduled as a cut-back, so I figured starting the week with two rest days was probably not the worst idea I ever had.

It did end up being more of a cut-back week than I intended; I meant to get another 8 miles in on Sunday, but it didn't happen. Such is life. All I can do is plan better next time.

Wednesday: 6 miles easy. It was HOT today, and although the tweaky tendon felt a little bit better for the rest, my tibias / shins were NOT happy with me. I am a little bit neurotic about stress fractures, and although I've been really careful about increasing mileage, pronation-induced shin splints does put me at a certain amount of risk. Although the pain gets pretty bad at times, I'm still passing the vast majority of the stress fracture tests (pain comes and goes with running instead of just getting worse; hopping on one leg is fine; there are localized spots on my shins that hurt when I press, but it's not excruciating pain, etc.), so I'm trying not to obsess too much.

Thursday: 9 miles (2 wu + 7 @ MP) 7:58 / mile & 175 bpm. These marathon pace runs are becoming BY FAR my toughest runs of the week -- absolutely harder than my half marathon pace runs, even though they're 20-30 seconds slower per mile and only a mile or two longer. On one hand, marathon pace should be 80-90% of max heart rate and this pace puts me at about 78%, so it's certainly not as if I'm over-taxing my cardiovascular system. On the other hand, right now I just can't imagine keeping up that pace for 3-4 hours. Could it just be a mental thing in terms of which distances my brain knows and is familiar with? Is it just that my body is tired, so the runs are harder on my musculoskeletal system? Is it that I've been doing my MP runs on the roads (meaning more hills and wind and a harder surface) and my HMP runs on the track (some wind, but only in small spurts)? All I know is, this run was utterly MISERABLE and I cannot tell you how excited I was to hear that last chirp from the Garmin. Ugh.

Saturday: 10 miles (1.5 easy, 8.5 MPish?) I'll post more about this run later. It was supposed to be a 3 mile warm up followed by a 5 mile HMP run, but for various reasons, that didn't happen. Still, it was a good run and I'm glad I got it in.

Sunday: 8 miles (3 wu + 5 HMP) Bemoan poor planning. I was really just a mess Sunday, logistically. I mean to be honest, it was raining when I woke up, and I don't really see how I can be expected to get much of anything done when it's raining. Sigh. Better luck next week, I suppose.

Grand Total: 25 miles

If it hadn't been a cut-back week anyway, I might be kicking myself for this. While not a habit I want to get into, missing one run is not the end of the world. This week, back to our regularly scheduled mileage.