WEEKLY SUMMARY (November 4-10): 48 miles (94% E, 4% T, and 2% I paces)

  Sunday: 6 miles at 7:28/mi.

  Monday: 7.2 miles at 7:24/mi.

  Tuesday: 6 miles at 7:26/mi.

  Wednesday: 2 E, 2 x 1 mile T @ 6:26/mi. avg., 1.2 E (5.2 miles total)

  Thursday: 6 miles at 7:36/mi.

  Friday: 2.7 E, 2 x (800m I @ 3:01 avg. + 400m E), 2.7 E (6.9 miles total)

  Saturday: 10.7 miles at 7:18/mi.

This turned out to be a fine recovery/transition week - much better than it would have been had I run the second half of the marathon faster. I just ran by feel for the first few days of the week, and I felt pretty good after a week of mostly rest. I ended up running around 10 seconds/mile faster than my typical easy pace before the marathon, but that's to be expected with rest, shorter runs, and no workouts. On Wednesday and Friday I did baby workouts to ease into just a smattering of faster running. It was quite windy both days (as well as Thursday), which added to the unpleasantness of trying to start running faster just a week and a half after a marathon. But it went well enough and I successfully erred on the side of caution. Then the weather changed on Saturday: the wind disappeared and it was much warmer.  I felt great extending the sort of easy run from earlier in the week a bit further. It looks like I ran a notch faster on Saturday, but in a way I didn't. On most easy-paced runs I start out slower and gradually speed up over 3-5 miles as I loosen up (without increasing effort). On a 6-7 mile run, that leaves me with only a couple miles at the faster end of my easy range. But on a slightly longer run like Saturday's, most of the run ends up being at the faster end of that range. This time I was pushing a little more than I normally do on an easy run during the last few miles, because I have a shorter easy run planned for Sunday. Next week I plan to continue with smatterings of speed on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with easy runs in between and another medium-long run on Saturday. I should be able to handle doing speedwork that often while the workouts remain light, though I'll have to space them out more when I can handle tougher workouts. On Monday I plan to continue bringing the pace down with some even shorter intervals (or repetitions in Daniels-speak). Friday's 800's at 6:00/mi. pace felt about the way I want 5:20/mi. pace to feel in a month, but I'm not ready to run that fast yet. On Monday I'll do some 400's in maybe the 5:40's. Then Wednesday and Friday will be the same sort of thing as this past week, but with a couple more intervals depending on how I feel: mile repeats at tempo pace on Wednesday (6:20 this time), and 800's on Friday around (or, this time, just under) 6:00 pace. At least that's my thinking now, which I'll adjust if it feels like too much too soon. I'm not much concerned about overall volume. It'll probably drift upwards into the mid-50's next week as the workouts become a little less brief, and I might bump the easy runs up to 7 miles and the medium-long run up to 12 - again, if it feels right. All of this is aimed at getting fast for some December races, the first of which is a 10k in three weeks. My current 10k PR is 37:48, which is 6:04 pace, on a fast course. I should be capable of getting into faster 10k shape now, but three weeks is a bit soon, and the race is not on a fast course as far as I know (not having done it before). For now I'll target challenging my PR, but really that'll be my warm-up race before I expect to be in better form for the races one and three weeks later. I'm strong right now from marathon training, so it's just a matter of doing the right speed workouts to translate that strength into speed that I can maintain for the relevant distance. But working up gradually to the point where I can do those workouts is the tricky part. It's also one of the parts of running I like best, though: the beginning of a training cycle, when the most rapid changes occur from shifting your focus from one kind of training to another. In general, I get a kick out of planning and executing a series of workouts that enable me, on a target date I specify, to do something (in this case, to run a certain distance around a certain pace) that I could not have come close to doing just a short time earlier. It's even more gratifying to make longer-term comparisons (e.g., I just ran a marathon at a faster pace than I could run a 5k three years ago...and was disappointed), which is why taking down my PR at a given distance is always among my goals. Anyway, next week should be another kind of transition toward doing the sort of workouts the following week from which I'll be able to get an idea of the 10k pace I'll be up to on Dec. 2.