SRM WEEK 10: Big Track Workouts + Blah blah Week 10 blah

First, this:

#howitis

Second - If you caught the previous post, you know that there is not much to say about week 10 aside from the Achilles tendon drama I managed to inflict on myself in Vancouver:

* * * WEEK 10 * * *
(5 to go)

Grand Total: 24 miles, all easy

(Also you get no bar graph because I added new stuff before I got around to writing this. Trust me, it was pretty lame; you're not missing much.)

Monday: Massage / rest / pack.

Tuesday: 8 easy

Wednesday: work work work

Thursday: 8 easy, strain Achilles tendon

Friday: 8 easy, make Achilles strain worse

Saturday: come to senses / rest / feel terrible about self

Sunday: rest / fly home

Ugh. Moving on.

* * *

The real issue with Vancouver and my travel schedule this month in general is that I'm into the part of the cycle where things alternate between a tough week & small long-run increase & an easier week with a bigger long-run increase, and my every-other-week travel schedule has been synched up so that I'm on the road for the tough weeks. The Tuesday I was in Vancouver, I was supposed to do an important 10-11 mile track workout, which didn't happen for both time & logistical reasons. This week that I'm home, I had an easier 7 mile track workout scheduled, then another 10-11 monster next week when I'm in LA.

Since I didn't do much last week, I made an executive decision to shift the tough workouts forward a week so that I can be sure to get in the key speed & tempo runs while I'm at home. So yesterday, instead of the easier 7 mile track workout, I decided to take a shot at the monster 10 miler from last week:

• 2 miles warm-up + drills & strides
• 3 x 800m / 200m recovery
• 20:00 @ goal marathon pace
• 3 x 800m / 200m recovery
• 2 miles cool-down

(You might think a track workout would not be the best one for testing out a sketchy Achilles tendon, but actually, the track is a GREAT place for that because it's really easy to stop at the first sign of trouble.)

When I got to the track I couldn't remember exactly what pace the 800m's were supposed to be at, but for the most part I do my speed work by feel anyway, so I just figured I'd just try to hit about the right level of effort & that would be fine.

I now present my observations from this workout:

1) Shit ain't called a "Key Workout" for nothing.

2) Totally ran the first 800m too hard. Not only did I positive split the first set of 3, but I also found myself taking rather unnecessarily long water breaks during the recoveries.

3) The hardest part of a "Key Workout" = whatever part you're currently doing (including the cool down).

4) Knock on wood, but I *THINK* my Achilles tendon is better? I mean if something was going to cause trouble, you'd think 10 miles on the track would be enough to do it.

As you can see, I managed to rally a bit towards the end, which probably either means I sandbagged a bit on the middle reps or took slightly longer water breaks than were strictly necessary towards the end.

On the other hand, after kind of lamenting how hard these 800m's were & (for some completely random reason?) feeling like I should have been able to run them a bit faster, it was gratifying to get home & check the schedule & see that officially these were supposed to be ~6:55ish, so averaging around ~6:30 was kind of knocking it out of the park (for better or worse).

My online schedule doesn't know that I've shifted things around, so when I logged my workout I received the Exclamation Point of Disapproving Caution:

Eh, whatevs.

Seriously, all I want to do is break 50 miles this week. I'm way past ready to do it; time to make this shite happen.