The Week Leading Up to the Mohican 50k

This week has been a good training week. After my hard run on Saturday I took Easter Sunday off and spent time with the family. I had brunch with my in-laws, a four plate effort, and then had an early dinner with my family, a two plate effort…I then had two plates of desert. It was a disgusting display of gluttony but that’s what the holiday’s are for. I also discovered that jelly beans are high in carbs, so let’s just say I’ve been carb loading this week.
Monday is always a lifting day and I put in a good effort, as I continue to improve my strength. The weather was horrible on Tuesday and I just couldn’t get myself out to run so I hopped on my wife’s elliptical for 40 minutes. I was surprised at how good of a workout it was and after a few minutes I was able to get comfortable and pretty much mimic my running stride without the impact of hitting the roads. On Wednesday I met up with some friends for my MIT group workout. I got in 4 tempo miles before the group showed up and although I didn’t have a watch on they were easily sub 6:30. I joined some of my teammates who were doing interval training for a 1.5 mile warm-up on the track, which for me served as a cool down after my tempo. From there a group of us who weren’t doing intervals hit the trails for a 6 mile easy run. We were running 9 minute pace the first two miles just cruising along. One person in the group wanted to get in a few miles at 8:00 pace so we all agreed to speed up to help him along, so mile 3 was right at 8:00. As so often happens once you get out of the, I’m going to just get in a few slow miles mode, the pace quickened. Our fourth mile was 7:20, which was much faster than we intended to go but for the most part everyone was running comfortably. Now that I was warmed up again I got the itch to push the last two miles. I didn’t have a watch but my guess is that mile 5 was in the 6:40 range, which felt great so I kept increasing the pace. Again, no watch so I can’t confirm this but someone said they clocked my last mile in sub 6:00, which confirmed what my internal pace clock was telling me. The plan for the rest of the week is as follows, lifting on Thursday and another elliptical session on Friday…followed by the 50k on Sunday.