Still Chugging Along...

I’ve been a little lazy with my posting recently. My training has actually been going pretty well, but I’m just developing an ultra base right now and there’s nothing real exciting about that. I’ve stepped up my training to three days a week of running, fast on Wednesdays and long on Saturdays and Sundays, and I’ve been lifting and cycling for 1 hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The bike trainer I purchased turned out to be well worth the money. It allows me to cross train in the comfort of my own home and get some use out of my little used road bike.


As far as my last week of running is concerned, I had a nice workout on Wednesday with MIT. A group was doing mile repeats on the track, they were doing 4x 1 mile, and so I decided to join them since I haven’t really written up a training plan of my own. The track we work out at has lane barriers up during the winter, so it’s a little challenging measuring distance when you can’t run in lanes 1-3 so I just decided to run 4 laps, even though the distance was probably a little long. I hit my first “mile” at 5:52, the second at 5:45, and my third at 5:40. At that point Mary had arrived and I decided to scrap the last repeats and hit the trail for an easy 6 mile run. My legs just didn’t have the turnover after a hard weekend of training and I decided a 4th mile wouldn’t really do me any good. Mary and I churned out the 6 mile run at about 7:30 pace, which felt much better than those mile repeats! Total mileage, including warm-up and cool-down, ended up being just over 12 miles.

On Saturday I headed over to TWHS, hoping to catch some MIT’ers going out for a long run. No matter what time I show up it seems like Tim D. and his crew always start their run a half hour earlier. I figured it’s still dark at 7am now, so they’re probably going to be meeting at 7:30. I should have none running in the dark would not stop this group - they are one dedicated group of runners. So I ran into Tim’s crew at Hills, they were 6+ miles into their run and I was just hitting 3 miles. We ran together for another 12 miles, so I got in 15 for the day and they ran 18. Best part about the run was that it was Julie M’s birthday and in true team 8:30 style we celebrated after the run. There were Jello shots and mimosas, and Julie’s birthday candle’s were stuck in a bagel. I’ll tell you what, that group has a lot of fun and I’m glad they allow me to join in their fun from time to time.

Since I only ran 15 miles on Saturday I had to do at least 15 on Sunday. Mary was looking for someone to run with and I suggested Highbanks for a long run. We mapped out a nice little 5+ mile loop filled with hills and we ran that 3 times. The first loop sucked and was slow, second loop was easier but I had a little chaffing problem. We made a quick stop back at my car to remedy the problem and I think Mary was impressed with my running kit I keep in my car. Let’s just say I’m prepared for any situation that might present itself on a run, as long as I’m able to make it back to my car! We set our for a third loop, which flew by and tacked on a little distance on at the end to get an even 16 miles for the day. We averaged 8:01 pace overall, which explains why Mary was running away from me at the end – I’m guessing she wanted to hit 8:00 on the dot but I was holding her back. It ended up being a really great run and got me to a 50k distance covered for the weekend.

Hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy gorging yourself this weekend, you’re a runner, you deserve to let loose every once in a while!