A Balance, Redefined

Nice job Adam. It's amazing what sleep can do for your performance. That's great that your schedule will allow you to sleep longer. I as well got 8 hours of sleep last night. 80 to 90 miles a week I know for me with not much sleep is dreadful, and it seems to hit you hard the following week (the fatigue factor). I can also remember in College where even 4 to 5 hours of sleep was fine with no issues (when not running as much).

I'm starting to look at training this way, if I'm running all these miles being determined to be ready for a PR in a HM or full Marathon than it will not do me any good for race day if the rest and sleep is not balanced. I've just wasted all those determined hours of training. Because I will not be PR'ing with fatigue legs, because of the lack of sleep in the training.

Kory, thanks for the input. Glad to hear you also got some sleep. It seems like work has been just as hectic for you lately... Don't these people know we have training to do :) Your comment is just the thing I've been struggling with most the last couple of weeks. I know if I want to meet my marathon PR goals I need to increase my training in specific ways either amount or intensity at different times. But I agree without the recovery your dead on your feet. The good news is that since my last injury I've learned to take my easy runs easy. Back in St. Louis if I wasn't running under 7-min pace I thought it was a waste of my time. now as you can see most of my recovery runs are around 8-min pace or even slower. That has helped the most. I just hope that the extra time sleeping doesn't lead to problems at work. I know this week is down as far as waiting for reagents and next week will be tougher so I figured why not get the rest while I can...

Thanks for the info. Question: have you noticed better performance/improvement now that all your runs are not under 7/min pace? Did you experience a faster pace by training this way?

I've recently this year tried to switch gears and have been doing the same approach where all my runs are not under a 7/min pace. I've gotten a lot better at this especially this week. I know that building that aerobic endurance helps your body maintain Carbs better than vs always running fast and burning them off so in a long race your body does develop the ability to maintain carbs better, because of the slower pace running.

Overall I would have to say yes. I'm running some of my fastest times in 8-yrs. However, I can not conclusively say that this is because of slower easy runs or higher cummulative mileage. Assuming this cycle of training works, I'm going to switch the next round and drop back down to a slightly lower weekly mileage with more intensity for the summer season and see how that mixes things up... However, I think the overall thing that I need to focus on now is recovery so that I don't push over into overtraining...