Turin training week 3: last week in the US

Daily details:
Mo: 6.5
Tu: 8
We: 10
Th: 7
Fr: 6 x 1 mile in 6:31, 24, 17, 16, 09, 5:59 with 3 min. recoveries
Sa: 8
Su: 15
Week total: 66

My last full week in the US before heading to Italy saw some of the nicest August weather in the DC area for ages. I was lucky that the nicest morning of all, which felt almost Fall-like, was on Friday, when I had mile repeats on the schedule. I enjoyed running them not only in the fantastic weather but also on my favorite trail around a lake instead of on the track. The heat and humidity are on the rise again now, as is the general stress level in my household as we run around tying up lose ends and getting ready to leave in a few days for four months. I've doubled my mileage in six weeks now and will finally get a recovery week next week as we travel and begin adapting to Rome. My body is still holding up well, though I'm ready for a lighter week before continuing to push harder. Just a short entry this week (and maybe the next), but I hope to be more expansive about my experiences running in Italy soon. 

Turin training week 2

Daily details:
Mo: 7
Tu: 3 x 2k averaging 6:34/mi. pace with 1 min. recoveries, then 1 x 800 in 3:02 before overheating
We: 5.5
Th: 11
Fr: 6
Sa: 6.5
Su: 15, pushing miles 3-5 (7:00, 6:42, 6:34) and 11-13 (6:34, 6:33, 6:18)
Week total: 60

I wrote last week about beginning to feel the accumulating mileage, which has now nearly doubled from the low 30s that I had been running for most of 2014 before Grandma's. The fatigue seemed to peak last weekend and in the first part of this week. In spite of (or maybe partly because of) losing what had been my one weekly off day (Wednesdays) prior to this week, I started feeling more energetic mid-week and especially by the weekend, after two short and easy days leading up to my first long run workout of this cycle. Before that, on Tuesday I did what was supposed to be a workout combining some tempo and faster paced intervals, but the humidity and heat on the track stopped me during only the second of what was supposed to be four 800s (with two minute recoveries) eventually getting under 6:00 pace. The magnified heat on the track, together with the 80 or so high school girls wandering all over the place at lacrosse camp, were enough to deter me from using the track again this summer. I'll do my remaining workouts somewhere more shaded and less busy before heading to Italy, where I'll be unlikely to have access to a track anyway. The main running event of my week, though, was Sunday's long run workout. The second tempo section in miles 11-13 was the main focus. The idea was to push when I was tired out and had some miles in my legs. My target was 6:30 pace. I took things easier on the first tempo section, because it was 98% humidity when I started, from fear of running out of gas early. But my 6:18 last tempo mile indicates that I started out a little too conservatively. It was an encouraging workout, though, and it felt good to dig deep at the end of a longish run while thinking about the last stage of a marathon. I'm all in for the marathon now, though I do miss getting the legs moving faster and was disappointed to miss an opportunity for that on Tuesday. But nothing in running compares with the feeling of running long and (relatively) fast, in my opinion. When you still feel strong, or find a second (or third) wind, after running 15 or so miles and can then actually accelerate while staying loose, gliding faster over the ground long after it seems possible to continue without tying up or just stopping - that, in my opinion, beats the exhilaration of running faster but shorter any day. I won't say that it's harder, in terms of the effort required or the pain to be endured. But both training for and execution in longer races do seem to involve more variables and thus have more opportunities for things to go wrong. I have some memory of reading Desi Davila, now Desi Linden - one of the top US marathoners - saying that in the marathon it doesn't matter how fast you can run; what matters is how fast you can run after 20 miles. I think about that a lot when running. And lately I've also been motivated by the image, seared in memory, of the guy in my running club, Rob Wolfe, with whom I ran the first half of Grandma's, pulling away from me at halfway as he accelerated from around 6:50 pace down into the 6:30s. I later found out that he kept running faster for the entire second half, while I went from barely hanging on to slowing more and more, and finally stopping several times in the final miles. Next time I'll be better prepared.

Turin training week 1 (of 16)

Daily details:
Mo: 7
Tu: 5 x 1 mile with 3 min. rest, starting at 6:27 and cutting down to 6:07
We: off
Th: 11
Fr: 4 mile tempo averaging 6:37/mi.
Sa: 7
Su: 14
Week total: 55

Grandma's marathon was 6 weeks ago, and the Turin marathon is in 15 weeks. So in accordance with the tradition of allowing 16 weeks for a marathon build-up, let's call this week 1 of my training for Turin. I took a week off after Grandma's, then ran 33, 37, 44, and 50 miles in the weeks before this one. During that time I have felt like I'm both beginning to get back into shape after a long period of light training, and beginning to adapt to some of the methods of my new coach, Ryan Vail, which I really like. For the previous three weeks I had been doing a fartlek once a week, which prepared me for the mile repeats and the tempo run this week. They still felt like a significant uptick in intensity, but I was pleasantly surprised at my budding fitness from those three fartleks. The long runs and overall volume are coming along too. It doesn't look like much yet, but 55 miles is the most I've run in a week since last October, and I'm doing more intensity while increasing mileage than I've typically done in the past. I'm beginning to feel it this week, both more fatigue while not running and more strength while running. The latter, I think, comes substantially from including some faster running early in the build-up, so that I'm not just slogging through more and more miles but instead gradually feel stronger and smoother even as I build volume. As for the former, fatigue while not running, I recall in the past a sort of hump that I just need to get over and then I begin to feel better. The magic number for me has seemed to be 50 since I first started running that many miles per week in 2011. Getting up to that level, and getting used to it, was a lot harder than staying there or increasing either volume or intensity beyond that point (at least up to 80, which is the highest I've gone so far), and in fact I usually feel much better once I'm used to running 50+ miles a week than I do when running any fewer. Once I realized this, I largely succeeded at keeping my weekly mileage at or over 50 throughout most of the year for a couple years - until this past calendar year. I'm over the hump numerically now but haven't fully adapted to it yet. I'm looking forward hopefully to not letting the volume slip consistently lower again in the foreseeable future. Another thing I'm looking forward to right now is fall weather. This has been probably the nicest summer weather we've had in the DC area since I moved here six years ago, but the humidity can still be really oppressive. Two and a half weeks from now I'll be in Rome, which is the only place I've been where the humidity rivals DC's - at least it did for the few days I was there back in 2010. I'm interested in comparing the two climates but don't expect the weather in Rome to be an improvement over DC in late August. It very well may be hotter, especially than DC has been this summer, which Greece (where I usually go in the summer) is too. But typically the humidity is low in Greece, which more than makes up for the heat in my opinion. Rome will be more humid than Greece, but we'll see whether it's more humid than DC and how its combination of heat and humidity compares with DC's. This comparison interests me less, however, than the approach of fall weather does. In my opinion, fall is hands-down the best season of the year, for running or anything else. Thinking about that helps me get through late summer, when I sweat so much on longer runs that by the end I'm somehow wetter than I ever feel after swimming. When this coming fall arrives I will be in Italy, no less. For that I can handle a few more - realistically, around half a dozen more - muggy weeks.