Daily details:
Mo: 7
Tu: 14 on hills (last 3 miles 6:47, 6:42, 6:31)
We: 7, 5
Th: 7 mi. tempo @ 6:29/mi. (12 total)
Fr: 6
Sa: 7, 4
Su: 20 (first half progressing from 8 to 7 minute pace, then averaging 6:56 pace for the last 10 mi.)
Week total: 82
Mo: 5
Tu: 7
We: 7, 5
Th: 7 (plus 6 strides)
Fr: 7
Sa: Navy / Air Force Half Marathon in 1:24:39 (18 total)
Su: 7
Week total: 63
Mo: 7
Tu: 7
We: 12 on hills (last 3 miles 6:56, 6:53, 6:40)
Th: 6 x 800m in 2:59, 2:58, 2:54, 2:52, 2:51, 2:49 (10 total), 5 (pm)
Fr: 7
Sa: 8
Su: off (pain above left knee)
Week total: 56
Mo: 7 mi. tempo @ 6:28/mi. (12 total)
Tu: 7
We: 24
Th: 7
Fr: 7
Sa: Clarendon Day 10k in 38:05 (10.5 total)
Su: 12.5
Week total: 80
I had some good workouts and tune-up races this month, and only one minor set-back. My tempo runs extended to 7 miles in the high 6:20s, and I was able to hold that pace in the Navy / Air Force Half marathon. That's probably the end of tempos at that pace for this training cycle, as I shift to focusing on faster paces for shorter distances and marathon pace. I'm still just beginning to run the faster paces again. The one track workout I did this month went well but was only my first real attempt at speed work since Spring, and the 10k race the following week showed that I still have a ways to go in that department. The new stress of speed work also took its toll by forcing me to take a day off at the end of the third week this month, on a day when I had planned to do a long run. I bounced back just fine after the extra rest, but it did leave me with two lower mileage weeks in a row, since it happened the week after a planned recovery week. No big deal. As for marathon workouts, the big one occurred at the end of the first week. I set out planning to run some unspecified number of miles at marathon pace - I was hoping for at least 5 - at the end of a 20 mile run. But from the beginning I felt good, and the weather had turned to an unusually early Fall crispness. So I went for it and ended up attempting a 10/10 workout, which I'd never done before but have often read of others using as their peak marathon training run. The idea is to progress gradually from a slow start to marathon pace over 10 miles, and then to hold marathon pace for another 10 miles. Somehow I almost pulled this off at sub-3 hour marathon pace a full 10 weeks before my target marathon. It was tough but things were going ok until I reached a mile-long hill in the 17th mile. I was getting tired anyway and didn't even try to run fast up the hill, using it instead to recover enough that I could run the final 3 miles strong. Not including mile 17, which I ran in 7:56, my average pace for the other 9 miles in the second half of this run was 6:49. To run a sub-3 hour marathon, you need to average 6:52 or faster. That one slow mile brought my average pace down to 6:56 for those 10 miles, and my average pace for the entire 20 miles was 7:16. (My current marathon PR of 3:12 from last October is 7:20 pace). After that monster training run, I became worried about overtraining. So I spent the entire next week, which featured a mini-heat wave anyway, running easy and short before the half marathon, after which I spent another 3 days running easy to make sure I was fully recovered. Perhaps even that wasn't enough, since the scare that forced me to take a day off happened after I then returned to doing harder runs. (Two in a row probably wasn't a good idea just then). I've been fine this past week, though, so hopefully that's behind me. At the end of this coming week is my next major marathon workout: the Annapolis Striders Metric Marathon, which I'll try to run at around 6:45 pace. Besides that, in October I hope to finish bringing my speed back online with a couple of shorter races and some more track workouts. If all goes well, I'll probably stay around 80 miles per week only for another 2-3 weeks before starting to taper gradually toward mid-November. I find myself looking forward more to running fast in shorter races than to making another attempt at a sub-3 hour marathon. But that may be in part because those shorter races are sooner and frankly don't compare to the pain of running a marathon hard, which I'm not ready to start bracing myself for yet. When the time comes, though, I'll be ready.
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