Oct. 22 - Nov. 18: four solid weeks

Daily details:
We: 6
Th: 8
Fr: fartlek: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 min. with equal recoveries
Sa: 8
Su: 9 plus strides
Mo: 8
Tu: 18 pushing miles 3-5 @ 6:19/mi. and miles 15-16 @ 6:28/mi.
Week (10/22-28) total: 69

We: 6
Th: 9
Fr: 6 x 2k with 2 min. rests @ 6:19/mi. average
Sa: 9
Su: 9 plus strides
Mo: 10
Tu: 15
Week (10/29-11/4) total: 70

We: 6
Th: 3 x 3 miles with 3 min. rests @ 6:23, 6:19, 6:17/mi. average
Fr: off (traveling)
Sa: off (traveling)
Su: 6 in Sorrento
Mo: 6
Tu: 19 mile progression run with miles 14-17 in 6:46, 6:39, 6:43, 6:28
Week (11/5-11) total: 50 (planned recovery week)

We: 7
Th: 4
Fr: 3.5 miles (3.5 min. rest), 2.5 miles (2.5 min. rest), 1.5 miles @ 6:12/mi. average
Sa: 10
Su: 9 plus strides
Mo: 7
Tu: 23
Week (11/12-18) total: 71

Allow me to compensate for not updating this running blog for four weeks by finally adding some more photos from Italy. Here is the trail by the Tiber river where I do most of my running in Rome:

Where I usually start running, facing southwest.

Me running on a different part of the trail.

My son using tactics to beat his mother to the finish line.

I've had four solid weeks of training since my last post. Only one workout, on Tuesday of the first week above, fell short of my goals. I was supposed to run 19 miles with 3-mile tempo sections near the beginning and the end, but I fell apart during the second mile of the last tempo section (mile 16) and stopped early. Otherwise I've met or exceeded expectations in every workout. I was especially happy with what felt like a breakthrough 3 x 3 mile workout on Thursday of the third week above, just before I took two days off while traveling in the Bay of Naples during a planned recovery week. With the extra rest I then came back and hammered my long run on Tuesday of that (third) week, starting faster than usual and speeding up from there. My average pace of 7:05 for 17 miles, before doing two more cool down miles, is a hair faster than my marathon PR pace. Three days later (Friday of the fourth week above) I still felt strong and lowered what had become my standard 6:19-ish tempo pace down to 6:12. Lord willing and the creek don't rise, as the saying goes, I should be stronger than ever at the Pisa Marathon nearly a month from now. But the creek - i.e., the Tiber river - did rise on the day I was scheduled to run 23 miles (the last day above). The first two photos show the river at a typical level next to the trail and the late 19th-century flood walls rising ominously beside it. Those walls now protect Rome from the flooding that plagued the city for most of its history. So far the river has risen high enough to flood the trail only twice while I've been here: during my trip to Naples, which didn't affect me, and on the day when my longest run of this training cycle was scheduled (and the following day). But the goal of that run was just to be on my feet running for roughly three hours, without pushing the pace, so it was no big deal to run on sidewalks and streets for part of the way until I got to parts of the trail that were high or far enough from the rain-swollen river to be safe to run on. I finally discovered the end of the trail on this run as well: there are 11.5 continuous miles of asphalt trail along the Tiber river in Rome. It extends further than that to the northeast, but I don't run that direction because the surface becomes rough, uneven concrete. The direction to run from the Borgo area, where I live (near the Vatican and Castel Sant' Angelo), is southwest, past Trastevere and opposite Testaccio, then roughly parallel to Via Ostiense (Via del Mare), as the river travels, until the trail ends nearly halfway to the coast. Along the way you pass suburbs, gypsy camps, stables, and fields, before turning around and seeing it all again in the opposite order on the way back into the city. I'll miss running in Rome when we leave the day after Pisa, but I still have more work to do before then.