Daily details:
Mo: 6 mi. tempo @ 6:30/mi. in Athens (11 total)
Tu: off (traveling back to the US)
We: 5
Th: 14 on "hills"
Fr: 6
Sa: 6
Su: 20k marathon pace run @ 6:49/mi. (15.5 total)
Week total: 57.5
Mo: 7
Tu: 13 (last 4 miles in the high 6:50's)
We: 7, 5
Th: 14 on hills (last 3 miles 6:54, 6:53, 6:41)
Fr: 7
Sa: 6 mi. tempo @ 6:27/mi. (12 total)
Su: 10
Week total: 75
Mo: off (tight hamstring)
Tu: 14 on hills
We: 7, 5
Th: 22
Fr: 7
Sa: 11
Su: track workout with 4 x 800 in 3:00, 2:56, 2:53, 2:55 (8.5 total), 5.5 (pm)
Week total: 80
These three weeks were transitional in several ways: I returned to the US and settled back in, my classes started in the third week but I was very busy and stressed with other work-related things (I'm up for tenure) for weeks beforehand, and running-wise I started shifting my focus to getting faster while maintaining my base. Along the way I had a couple set-backs, but nothing major. The first set-back was that I didn't recover well from the long trip back to the US. My weight dropped a bit and I had a migraine on the day before the Leesburg 20k. Often I don't run at all the day after a migraine, and I almost certainly would have skipped it if I had planned to race it all-out. But since the plan was to run marathon pace, I went ahead with it and just managed to stick it out, though it wasn't pretty. I felt fine for about the first third but tired out long before I normally would have and had to struggle to maintain a 6:49/mi. average pace. But I got it done. Afterwards I bounced back quickly and almost automatically found roughly that pace again at the end of both my medium-long runs the following week, which was encouraging. But apparently that and another 6 mi. tempo run were a bit too much too fast for my hamstrings. They were tight on one leg during that second week, and then at the end of the week the hamstrings on the other leg tightened up enough to force me to take a day off. Clearly running even a bit faster more often is the main cause of this, but I suspect that being really stressed out during the same period contributed as well. Most of the stress had passed by the third week, and I was also more careful then to avoid faster running for a little while. Though I'm still tighter than I'd like, by Sunday I was confident enough to go ahead with my first (baby) track workout since March. It was slow and short but served its purpose: to begin the process of slowly re-introducing my body to sub-6 minute mile paces, initially at very short distances. If I can work through this hamstring tightness, then I hope to do another tempo run and track workout in the two weeks before my first real Fall tune-up race, the Navy-Air Force Half Marathon. It's not going to be super fast, judging from my tempo runs lately. But my main goal will be to run a solid and consistent pace throughout, as opposed to last year when I fell apart early in the same race. I also hope to take advantage of the cooler weather that is forecasted to do a hard 20-miler next weekend with a good stretch of marathon-pace miles at the end. Otherwise, I'll keep putting in the miles but will mostly resist the urge to run faster in order to let my hamstrings loosen up. Even though my speed isn't back online yet, I'm feeling confident about the shape I'm in and what it portends for the Fall racing season. I keep repeating the first rule of running to myself: don't get injured.
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