Sunday, September 7, 2008

Race Season Begins

This week I enter the "competition" phase of the program. Saturday I will run a very low key 15k race here in South Royalton. In past years I won this race easily, but this year looks like my friend Gavin, who ran 2:40:XX at last year's Boston Marathon and looks like he is peaking to run sub 2:40 at the Bay State Marathon in October, will try to spoil my party. I am excited to see how my fitness stacks up against someone who has already run very fast. I feel like this is win/win situation, low pressure but possibly a huge confidence builder.

This past week was off the hook training wise. I felt a little stale on Tuesday morning for my seven mile tempo run, but I still managed 42:25 in the middle 7 miles of a 15 mile run. I hate running early, but it was very warm this week and so I made an effort to get out before the sunshine for my hard days this week. I cranked out a solid 15 on Thursday sans tempo effort but still kept a solid pace.

Finally, today was the apex of my conditioning phase. I ran 24 miles, total time 2:55:28. My buddies gave me some great support, meeting me out on the course several times to give me water and food. I experienced some "wall" like sensations on the last two miles and struggled quite a bit to maintain my pace. Overall, the run was a confidence boost. Hopefully I will finish in less time than that. Total miles for last week: 95 miles. I think that may be as high as I get this season, it requires a serious effort to get in all the runs and make it to class still coherent about the hearsay doctrine.

Next week is more of the same but only looking to run about 90 miles including the race on Saturday. No tempo run however, only an abbreviated Vo2 max work out on Tues. Medium long run of 15 on Wed. and then a couple recovery days to sharpen up for Sat. Twenty next Sun.

2 comments:

THE KRIS said...

i love the phrase, "...only looking to run about 90..."

RM said...

damn