Monday: Off day.
Tuesday: 10 miles, medium-long. Nothing really interesting here.
Wednesday: 13 miles, medium-long. So today was the first time the schedule called for back-to-back medium-long runs. I was actually quite pleased with how today's run turned out - I got started around 10:30 or 11:00 after having put in a full day at the lab and at the office, and although I didn't really feel like running when I first got back home, once I actually put the shoes on and got out the door, my body more or less settled into the appropriate pace on its own. Really, the point of all of this training is to develop your body's ability to just metronomically grind out mileage, independent of how you actually happen to be feeling, so seeing this in action was actually kinda cool.
Thursday: 5 miles, recovery day.
Friday: 9 miles, general aerobic.
Saturday: 5 miles, recovery day. Today's run kinda took me by surprise; I'm not quite sure how or why this happened, but for whatever reason, I just felt completely dead today. Maybe it was because I decided to run in the morning for the nice weather we've been having lately (ordinarily I've been running kinda late at night). In any case, I came down with a serious case of the runner's blahs (maybe I should have been a zombie for Halloween :-). So given that I wasn't really making much progress on the physical front today, I decided to try for some progress on the mental front. One of the overall goals that I set for myself as part of this training regimen is to learn to run smarter. I've not been very good at this in the past, and it's actually cost me on several occasions. So rather than do what I would ordinarily have done on an occasion like this (forcing myself to run harder), I tried to recognize it for what it was (having a bad day as a result of increasing intensity of the runs earlier in the week), and not stress out about it too much since today was supposed to be a recovery day anyway (i.e., one in which the goal is not to run fast, but to recover so that the following workout will be a good one). We'll see how this works out tomorrow.
In other news, today being Halloween (the most awesome holiday of them all) , I went down to 6th Street tonight to check out the freak show, and found it suitably epic :-).
Sunday: 17.5 miles, long run. So today was the longest day in the schedule so far, and to be honest, I was somewhat apprehensive before attempting this workout. You'll recall last week's workout didn't really go as well as it could have, and I ended up in a pretty sorry state by the time I got back. So although today was supposed to be just some generic long mileage, my personal goal (in keeping with the overall theme of learning to run smarter) was to practice running intelligently. In the past, I've had serious problems getting carried away early in races, and then just trying to hang on through the later half. For shorter races like the 5K, this isn't necessarily a bad idea, as you generally want to establish a good race position as early as possible for psychological reasons, and the race is sufficiently short that even if you're really hurting over the last mile, you can gut it out if necessary. However, in longer races like the half-marathon or marathon, burning through your glycogen stores early on will leave you in a world of hurt.
So my personal goals for today were:
- Pay attention to maintaining consistent, timely pace, especially in the earlier miles where you know you have a tendency to go a little nuts.
- Hydration/replenishment: Take along an appropriate quantity of Gatorade, and consume it steadily throughout the run to prevent (delay) dehydration/electrolyte depletion. (The body's thirst mechanism is notoriously slow - generally, by the time you actually feel thirsty, it's far too late to do anything about it - you'll have to take on a great deal of water fairly quickly to rehydrate, and this results in waterlogging and electrolyte depletion, both of which suck pretty bad. You gotta be proactive here.)
Total weekly mileage: 59.5 <-- right direction again :-).
