Getting warmer...

Week 9: 2/7/11 - 2/13/11 (9 weeks remain)

(^OH SHIT - WE'RE INTO SINGLE DIGITS!)

Monday: Off day

Tuesday: Didn't run today; I was working in lab until 11:00 (IN THE PM!) trying to get our robot's map generation software to work - before realizing that the open-source software repository we were using (the ROS octomap_ros package, for those of you, dear readers, who may be familiar with the Robot Operating System framework) was in fact an experimental build, and hence riddled with implementation errors. As a wise man once said, open-source software is only "free" if your time is worthless :-/. On the other hand, I feel slightly less bad about skipping out on today's workout due to the fact that it was meant to be a recovery run.

Wednesday: 14 miles, medium long. Got out to run this afternoon, and was very pleasantly surprised by the trail conditions today: a great proportion of the Charles running trail was COMPLETELY CLEARED OF SNOW! Thinking back to my "calibration" on the treadmill last week, I took this opportunity to hit some long continuous stretches of this run (altogether probably around 10 miles or so) at around target marathon pace (~ 6:45 or so). I was actually quite pleased with today's workout; forcing the faster pace on last week's LT run seems to have shocked my body out of its complacency - maintaining this pace today didn't seem to require as much effort as it did last week, particularly later on in the run (after mile 7 or so) where I finally hit the Zone. God, it's been a long time since I've felt that - I'd forgotten how awesome that feels :-).

Thursday: Recovery day - 6 miles on the treadmill.

Friday: 13 miles, medium-long. Good conditions continue to hold up.

Saturday: 5 miles, recovery day.

Sunday: 16 mile run w/ 12 miles at target marathon pace. We had an incredible stroke of luck - temperatures today were in the mid-40's to low 50's; it felt positively tropical, and a good proportion of the snowbanks around town have now completely melted. You can actually see large sections of the sidewalk all over town :-DDD!

So the goal today was to do a 16 mile run with 12 miles or so at target marathon pace. Unfortunately, it's hard to find a contiguous 12-mile section of trail, even around the Charles, and I'm not sure that I was actually running at my goal marathon pace. My (ideal) target pace is somewhere in the 6:30 - 6:50 range, but frankly I'm not sure I can maintain that pace over this distance yet (partially because I haven't really been able to practice running at that pace over the previous month-and-a-half or so, due to the snow). So although I'm not sure I actually hit my goal pace (forgot to bring a watch with me) I would estimate I probably ran about a 10- 12-mile segment at 7:15 pace or so, which is actually just about the cutoff pace for requalifying.

On the plus side, I was focused on keeping the pace what felt like uncomfortably fast, and research has shown that the actual aerobic benefit you get from a workout scales more or less linearly with the perceived level of effort, so I should still have gotten something useful out of this. I'm actually about to enter the speed-work portion of my training plan, so with any luck, the streets will stay clear from here on out so I can work on getting my pace up.

Total weekly mileage: 54