Wednesday, December 26, 2007

ALMOST SHOCKED

Today's my seventh and last day off in a row from work, so I'll make this a quick training update and then hopefully get back in the blogging routine tomorrow.

After Friday's 22 miler, I ran a very easy 5 miles on Saturday. I think I felt every step of the previous day's run during those 45 minutes. That gave me 76 miles for the week on 6 days of running and 7 total runs.

Last Monday the Vikings were on Monday Night Football and I was able to get in a nice progression run on the treadmill during the game. This week they played on Sunday Night Football and I decided to jump on the treadmill again - besides, it's been snowing like crazy around here, so getting on the treadmill didn't bother me.

Anyway, rather than progressively pick the pace up over the course of the entire run, I did more of a marathon paced workout. After a 3 mile warmup I was at 7:00 pace and gradually dropped down to 6:26 pace. To be honest, I was almost shocked at how easy sub-2:50 pace felt.

Looking back at my log from a year ago, I see a 10 mile run with 6 miles at 6:48 pace - during which my HR was 170-180. Sunday's run was 12 miles and it included 8 miles at 6:36 pace - and get this, my highest HR was 172.

It seems like I'm doing something right.

This week is going to be a cutback week for me. Monday I ran an easy 6 miles. The biggest news from that run is that it put me over 3,000 miles for the year. Yesterday I ran an easy 8 miles on less than ideal footing. My Yaktrax helped, but they can't do anything about the areas that have 6 inches of powder.

Quote of the day;

"Are you in this simply to do mindless labor or do you want to improve? You can't improve if you're always sick or injured." - Bill Bowerman

2 comments:

  1. I'm just an average middle of the pack kind of runner but I came across your blog and would like to follow you to see what happens closer to the front of the pack!

    Glad to see other MN runners out in the snow!

    ReplyDelete