Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Oct. 15-21: Now that's more like it

Daily details:
We: 8
Th: 9
Fr: fartlek: (5, 4, 3), (4, 3, 2), (3, 2, 1) min. with equal recoveries
Sa: 8
Su: 9 plus strides
Mo: 7
Tu: 18 @ 7:17/mi. average, pushing the last 3 miles in 6:44, 43, 40
Week total: 70

The decision to redirect my focus from Turin to Pisa helped me turn things around this week. After last Tuesday's steady 18-miler, my recovery runs were a mile or two longer than they had been in previous weeks. I felt it for the first few days, but mostly I think it just required a mental adjustment to put in a bit more time each day. Friday's fartlek was slow because it was my first non-easy paced run in two weeks since before I got sick, but as usual it snapped me back into form. The next few easy runs were quicker and felt more comfortable, even though by the weekend I had accumulated more miles in any 7 day stretch yet this year. The real highlight of the week, though, wasn't finally hitting 70 miles but nailing Tuesday's long run. One week after averaging 7:38 pace for 18 miles (that is, starting slower and finishing faster than that), this time I started out at that pace and gradually squeezed it down to the 6:40s over the same distance, averaging 21 seconds faster per mile than last week. My coach's instructions were just to run 6:40-50 pace for miles 16-18, but the whole run ended up being faster from the beginning. I suspect that this jump in fitness may be a combined effect of bouncing back from being sick (and resting), and of adapting to the increase in (mostly easy) mileage this week. The plan now is to do a couple more weeks of the same volume with more of the usual types of workouts: another (hopefully faster) fartlek and then a long run with two sets of faster push miles next week. Even though it's late October now, it has felt like summer for the entire two months I've been in Rome. The temperature is usually still in the 80s (fahrenheit) when I run - sometimes upper 70s, sometimes low 90s. But there are signs today that Fall may finally be approaching here. Today I wore (short) sleeves on my run for the first time in months!

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Last two weeks' training and a change of plan

Daily details:
We: 6
Th: 8
Fr: 3 mile, 2 mile, 1 mile @ 6:22/mi. average with 3 min. and 2 min. rest
Sa: 8
Su: 9 plus strides
Mo: off (sick)
Tu: 7
Week total: 49

We: off (sick)
Th: off (sick)
Fr: 6
Sa: 7
Su: 7 plus strides
Mo: 7
Tu: 18 @ 7:38/mi. average
Week total: 45

I had higher mileage and some hard long run workouts scheduled for these two weeks. But I got sick and was forced to take several days off and to skip those workouts. My son had been sick for a while before I finally came down with whatever it was that he brought home from school. (My wife has it now). I was really wiped out for several days and couldn't do much of anything. This happened after I had to shorten my marathon pace run the previous week because I was tired from traveling to Venice. Since I wasn't getting key workouts in during the most important training window before the Turin Marathon, my coach and I agreed to pull the plug on Turin and aim instead for the Pisa Marathon five weeks later. Despite getting sick, I'm still in good shape and have had some good workouts. But I haven't had a really solid block of high quality training yet, initially because I trained so lightly during the first half of this year (which may still be affecting me), and then because I've encountered several unrelated set-backs since coming to Rome. Getting in a solid block of high quality training now that I'm in good enough shape to do so, focusing especially on long runs and marathon pace, is more important to me than running just pretty well in Turin. In some ways Pisa works out better anyway. The race is the day before we return to the US, December 21. My wife and I have been to Pisa before, four years ago, and wanted to go back anyway. I've already booked a room at the same hotel we stayed in before, and we definitely know where to eat: La Tana, a restaurant so good that we ate both lunch and dinner there several days in a row and considered making a trip to Italy the next time we were in Europe just to go back and eat there again. The race in Pisa is also much smaller than Turin, which is sort of the main Fall marathon for Italian running clubs. Unlike Turin, the Pisa Marathon caters to foreign as well as Italian runners. It'll be my first smaller marathon (capped at 3,000 runners, but likely smaller) as well as my first one outside of the US. The course is flat and includes scenic views from the coast beginning around halfway when things start getting tough. I'm excited about this new plan, more so actually than I was about the old one, and look forward to some hard training.