Week Summary: ran 30.5 miles; walked 8 miles; 35 min yoga; 30 min core/kickbox
- Mon - walked 2.75 miles; 19m yoga
- Tue - walked 2.5 miles; ran 5 miles (hill repeats)
- Wed - walked 2.5 miles; 10 min core; 20 min kickboxing
- Thu - ran 5.5 miles - 3 sets of 1200/400
- Fri - REST! Slept in :)
- Sat - 20 miles! 16m yoga
- Sun - REST! Slept in! 1h massage! :)
Cross Training
Still not doing as much as I should, but pleased that I worked in some core and strength exercises, and even a little kickboxing. I missed that!
20 Mile Run
20.02 miles in 4:27:34 @ 13:22 /mile. Splits: http://j.mp/r18kSj
It was ungodly hot and humid yesterday, so we kept the pace slow, ran the first 8 miles at 1:1, then finished with 12 miles at 2:1. I certainly had sore legs and feet towards the end, but nothing that lingered. The knees and feet behaved themselves, I felt strong throughout the entire run, and I was able to speed up at the end as usual. Do not mistake this for thinking it was easy. The entire time I felt like I was running in a sauna and that my skin could not breath, but it was a good run and I finished in very good spirits.
Our pace was almost a minute slower than the 18 miler two weeks ago, but I'm not bothered by that one bit. It was the right pace for the circumstances, and if we're being frank I ran the 18 miler too fast. The long runs are about endurance, not speed; and with us building up to a 29 mile run, I must run them slow enough to allow proper recovery and be able to benefit from the speed work during the week. Jeff says there is no such thing as running the long ones too slow, and I am now a true believer. I was pretty much destroyed after that 18 miles 2 weeks ago, but yesterday I felt like I could have kept running if I had to.
As soon as I got home, I stretched with some yoga, showered, and put on my compression gear. Even though I only had general soreness, I made used of the pockets and iced as a preventive measure. It worked wonders because I was not at all sore this morning, and I wouldn't have believed I ran 20 miles yesterday if I hadn't been there :) I got a massage this morning, which has become the usual after really long runs, but I really would have been fine without it so I was able to enjoy that much more.
The only thing I need to further tweak is avoiding chafing. I applied body glide everywhere I could think of before I started, but it was no match for the absurd amount of sweat that covered my entire body. My inner thigh got badly chafed near the seams of my shorts, so I may need to bring some with me and reapply mid-run.
This Week
This week calls for an easy run on Tuesday, 400s on Thursday, and then I'll be running a 10K race on Saturday as a birthday present to myself :) I have not raced since April, so I'm really looking forward to it. My plan is to treat it as a tempo run, and hope that I can PR since I've been doing so much speed work. However, I won't be disappointed if I don't since it will be much hotter than when I ran my previous PR, there may be some hills, and my priority is optimizing my marathon training so I won't do anything to jeopardize it. Many from my group are also doing this race, so it should be lots of fun.
