WEEKLY SUMMARY (July 15-21): 63 miles (95% at E/L, and 5% at 5k paces)

  Sunday: 9 miles at 7:46/mi. on a hilly course

  Monday: off

  Tuesday: 9 miles at 7:45/mi.

  Wednesday: 3E, 5 x .6 miles around 6:00/mi. (.4 miles jog), 2.2E (10.2 miles total)

  Thursday: 8.4 miles at 8:00/mi. on a hilly course

  Friday: 18 miles at 7:41/mi. on a hilly course

  Saturday: 8.4 miles at 8:05/mi. on a hilly course

Well, I didn't get over 70 miles this week, because the hills got to me. On Sunday I chose a route that started with a moderate-to-steep hill right from the beginning that is over a mile long. It was a rude way to start an easy run, but I felt recovered enough after halfway to resume a normal pace and then to coast a 6:35 final mile back down the same hill. Afterwards one of my lower calves started hurting progressively more throughout the day. That night around 2am my son woke up with a fever and my leg was throbbing, so running in the morning was off, and morning is really the only time I can run here. My leg recovered the next day (although my son is still a bit sick), and for my easy run on Tuesday I avoided hills as much as possible, even when it meant running back and forth on the same stretch of flat road. That enabled me to measure out a place for some nearly 5k-pace intervals on Wednesday. I found a relatively flat stretch of road about .6 miles long and 3 miles from where I'm staying. So that was my interval length on Wednesday. Once I stretched out to around 6:00 pace my legs and back felt tight, but I could hold the pace pretty well and recover quickly. Running faster was out of the question, though. I'm glad that Daniels has more 5k intervals on the schedule next week, since I need to do more of them to keep my legs from tightening up on these hills. On Thursday and Saturday I did my best impression of what a truly easy run might look like up here. I didn't avoid hills but ran very slowly up them and didn't let myself coast too quickly back down. By now I finally have the right form down for hill running: a straight back, looking up the hill, arms pumping, and legs pulled up high in front of me. That's the way to avoid lower back trouble, and it should help me run with better form on level surfaces too. By Saturday, a very easy day after a long run, I was surprised to find that I could run slowly up a very steep hill about half a mile long without breathing very hard. The big run of the week, and my only steady long run in Greece, was Friday's 18-miler. I chose a route whose toughest hills were near the beginning in miles 4-6, so I was tired early on and nearly spent by halfway. But I rallied after a gel and some flat and downhill running for a few miles. My pace at halfway was 7:53, which means that the second half averaged 7:29. The last 5 miles averaged 7:15, and for much of that time I was running in the 6:30's on the downhills and 6:40's on flats (my provisional marathon race pace is 6:45), but my climbing legs were shot so I was creeping slowly up hills. I'd say that effort was worth an average pace in the mid/high-7:20's on a flat DC course, but it's difficult to make such comparisons. Surely all this hill running has been good for strengthening my muscles, but I need to get back to flats soon to translate it to speed and endurance on the sort of course that I need to be training for (the MCM is almost totally flat). That'll have to wait another week, though. Next week we plan to visit a nearby island that I've never been to but that no doubt is equally hilly, and then we'll head back to Athens towards the end of the week. I'll shoot for 72 miles again, my original goal for this week, with an interval session and another one of those tempo interval sessions with an hour-long easy run tacked onto the end.