Monday, March 2, 2009

Weekly Recap (2/28)

After another week of training I’m only 5 weeks out from my first marathon of the spring. I kicked the training up a notch this week, adding more speed work and running at a faster pace on my long run. After my run at Mohican last Saturday I met up with a group of friends at Sharon Woods for an easy 7 mile run on Sunday. The multi-purpose path was dangerously icy so we stayed on the nature trails, which was fine by me. The more time I spend on trails, the more I dread running on the asphalt multi-purpose paths. I took Monday and Tuesday off from running but I lifted both days, which left me pretty sore the next day. The plan for Ash Wednesday was to do my second track workout of the spring, 8 Yasso 800’s on the track. Last week Mary and I did 6 Yasso’s and averaged 3:00 per ½ mile, with one minute rest between intervals. This week the plan was to run 8 Yasso’s, with an average pace of 2:55. There were four of us on the track this week: Matt Chany, Mary Dillhoff, John Herold, and myself. The first two 800’s were run at 3:00, which was the plan…I was planning on running slight negative splits. The second two 800’s were run at 2:56 each, one second slower than my goal time but solid. The next three 800’s were run at 2:52 and the last 800 was run in 2:49. All in all, I beat the 2:55 average so I was pleased but I sure was exhausted afterwards. The plan was to run a 4 mile cool down but I was so tired that I could only manage one mile. I lifted on Thursday and hung out with my sister and brother in-law who were in town for a couple days. I had planned on running on Friday, but my wife vetoed that because she thought it would be rude to leave our company at home while I trained, so I gave in. On Saturday morning I headed to Worthington to meet up with the MIT group, for a planned 20 mile run. It was a pretty weak turnout this week, with only about 6 member of my pace group showing up. The run went great, 20 miles at 7:45 pace with several hill sections worked into the run. The thing that really gave me confidence is that I felt stronger and fresher at mile 20 than I did in miles 3-8 when my knees were bothering me a bit. My 5-6 hour runs in Mohican have not only made me much stronger on hills, but they have really built up my endurance. If I can stay healthy these next 5 weeks I think I can do great things at my first spring marathon.

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