May 2, 2010
Weekly Training Summary (110.82 miles / 16:25:36)
Heavy! You want it heavy? Welcome to my world, feel the weight of it grinding down again… [Disturbed]
I was on the bus to Hopkinton (Boston start) and Glenn turns to me and asks, “So what’s your recovery plan after this race?”. With all my planning and focus on that day at hand, I hadn’t spent a minute thinking about this next phase. Didn’t have to yet. But instantly I muttered out something to the effect of “I will probably race a 5k then do a hundred mile week.” I think he rolled his eyes as to say “you won’t be invincible forever”. Got that 5k done. Then after my legs stopped that general post-marathon stiffness, I decided to make good on that remark from the bus.
Mon - 14 miles
Tue - 14 miles
Wed - 14 miles
Thu - 17 miles
Fri - 23 miles
Sat - Green, Bear, SoBo, Bear
Sun - 15 miles
No 2-fers on purpose. I could have easily pumped out a few more miles each night but it just would have been junky. I was focused on building fatigue this week. Just good steady aerobic effort for longer durations each day. Will continue on this path.
Ran basically the same loop each day except the mountain day. Went CW one day then CCW on the next. None of these runs were particularly fast or at any type of interesting HR level. Just smooth sailing each day. That’s what these next two races are going to be all about. Holding together for 12 and then 24 hours. Just cruising.
That mountain run needs to become a weekly standard I think. That was a good shake-up after all those flat miles. Totally different muscle groups at play. I took it totally easy that day as shown by the 139 average HR on that run. Nearly 20 bpm under marathon level pace. Pulled a PR out of that too! JV kept me honest by moving quickly but I would like to push harder in the coming weeks when I have this scheduled in more thoroughly.
I promised no more graphs because of all the crap I get for them. Too bad for you. I will use them to continue to gain on you and then defeat you. But the good news is that I am just points shy of my peak of fitness level for pre-Boston. All that taper then race then recovery puts a big chasm in the graph which I am very uncomfortable with given I have to race in mid-June again. So this big week was a great big shove to put things back in order and cross that chasm so I am back where I was pre-race. My goal is to keep pounding it down until I get back to some significant TSB once again and then let it come back up for air. Should pay off well.
So yeah, not quite what the textbook says you should do post-race. But the failures usually don’t set in that fast. This experiment should work out just fine. I could tell over the course of the week that I was good with the slow miles but I could only speed up after significant warm-up and wasn’t running as smooth at the end of some of the runs. Kept an eye on it. No injuries or pain to speak of at this point. Just a small rub on my big toe that I started wrapping.
I remember when 100 miles in a week was a big deal. I mean it still is but it wasn’t something I had to work for this time. I just cruised through it and was ready for more. However, I can’t spend too much more time running each week or I am going to have to sacrifice something else.
Hats off to Tony for getting it done at Miwok. Good to see him back on top again! But I know that he just had to pull that off so he could go to WS100 and wouldn’t have to face me at Lake City.
In any case, this was a PR for most miles in a week. Yeah…count goes back to 0 tomorrow.
