Pushing an 70+ mile week and feeling a bit like a slacker because I dropped a couple of my 4 mile easy run doubles to recover for the tempo effort today. Maybe it was just the body finally winning out over the evil master for a change...
There was no volleyball on Weds, just couldn't find the gumption to crawl off the nice leather couch while watching Olympics. The next morning I slept in till 7:30 missing my easy dreadmill run on purpose. Actually awoke on time before the alarm but no, back to the warm bed instead. Nice.... Then at lunchtime it was just a slow tired 6 miles around town about 2 minutes slower than the same effort earlier in the week. Felt draggy after the run and so no desire to do the treadmill thing after work either and opted for more recovery from the Weds hill workout.
Same deal this morning, woke up before the treadmill alarm time, but no, right back to sleep for another 45 minutes... yes! All this so the legs would have a chance to recover and put in a decent effort for today's 7 mile tempo run embedded in a 12 mile run. In order to improve you need to recover enough to go hard on hard days. The usual slogging pace just doesn't cut it and so there was no option but lose the doubles and not worry about the mileage game so much.
However, the tempo run went poorly, despite the legs feeling fresher than usual when heading out. The average pace for the 7mi on the usual hilly/windy/snow covered course was 7:42/mi with splits between 730 to 750. Damn! Can't even run marathon pace (<730) now on a tempo run... But I'm not despairing, this is the usual pattern for me in heavy training. Just don't have any speed but it usually comes back after the taper with the race day magic.
So, what's going to happen next? The disturbing pattern is:
Hills on Weds + Tempo Friday + Long run (24 todo) Sunday = Big Time Bonk?
Hey, I could be 'Just Like Mike' ! We'll see ;-)
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2 comments:
Mike, don't sweat the time trial tempo pace. It's early yet..
I'm with the famous guy above me about the tempo. Just this week I ran seven miles of what should have been tempo to keep a friend company that ended up being his marathon pace. He bombed it and he's Boston bound too, must be something to do with the moon. Start slow tomorrow, you'll make it through.
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