Stumbling down the road

This has been a strange week in some respects and truly is the 1st week of real training for the next marathon in October.

Started off with 17 mi in 2:20 (8:08 pace) on Sunday which was truly an awful day for running with pouring down rain the entire day. Waited around most of the day for a break in the skies but it just never came. Finally at 3pm it was do or do not time. Geared up with gatorade and the latest episodes of Phedippidations and was off into the torrent. At least the temps were mild (around 12C), the traffic light and the podcast was fun to listen to. SteveRunner is hilarious and had me laughing out loud at times. I'd put the mp3 player in a plastic bag which worked for the 1st 90 minutes but then died from all the moisture (note: successfully resuscitated with a hairdryer after the run) and ran the last part to the sound of raindrops. Arrived home like a drowned rat, peeled off my gear into a bucket and dried off with the towel before being allowed permission to enter. I was tired and it was nice to be done!

Monday - standard rest day and feeling tired and a bit sore with tight achilles lately. Biked to/from work 2x and did a set of pushups and crunches in the morning.

Tues - sticking to the plan which called for 8 miles with 10x100 strides. Check out the wild Garmin output below.
No I'm not in cardiac arrest but rather my speed and heartrate are spiking for each little push of about 25 seconds followed by a jog/walk before taking off again on the 'minute'. This was also a pseudo-progression run with each mile a bit faster than the last (except for the strides mile). It went like 826, 802, 741, 733, 731, 902 (strides), 713, 659 and felt well under control throughout.

Weds - was the dreaded midweek long run with 13 scheduled (plus hills down pencilled in for good measure). Started out slow and steady with legs feeling tired and heavy from the previous day. After about 3 miles of this the plan was changed to do a simple out and back run on hilly terrain but no hill repeats this time. The run got progessively more difficult and had to remind myself a few times 'this is fun' but the road and hills just stretched on forever and the run really dragged on. Finally after 1:46:08 my 1/2 marathon training run was over and I collapsed at my desk for the rest of the day. Whew! You'd think that this was my 1st time doing this!

Thurs - easy day with only 6 miles scheduled and the plan was to make certain that this was done very-very easy, just as I've been preaching to Thomas. So along the lines of the pros like Duncan I set my running buddy Mr V to run at marathon pace plus 1 minute which for me is ~8:30 and we were off like a herd of turtles! Oh did I mention that I'd almost ran over a turtle with my bicycle on the way home the other day? Anyway, today's run was an absolute joy with the rain (constant here lately) letting up and the run felt almost tripping over my feet easy. It was a bit more than a jog and had to keep a close eye on Mr V especially on the hills but in the end the overall pace was 8:28 for the 6.2 miles. Felt totally refreshed and raring to go after todays run ;-)

Hopefully this means there will be some spare energy for the planned tempo stuff on Friday. We'll see but so far so good!