A Balance, Redefined

Night run. We have a candidate in for an interview that I took out for dinner. Turns out he is a 9X Ironman. So we went for a run after dinner. Just did the Suicide Loop from my house. 

Avg. 8:00 HR 144

A&W Commute run slightly shortened. Today is the first day of classes back so it is amazing to see the change in the number of people around campus. 

Avg. 8:55 HR 129

AM: Commute run. A little toasty for so early in the morning.

Avg. 8:49 Mi. 2.5

PM: Surprise, surprise, I actually had a workout tonight. I did the TTT, Tuesday Time Trial. This was a run of the Adam's TT 5K on the Course Tool. I had a normal 10 hr day and then after I got the girls down and my wife got back from back to school night I headed out the door. There is a one mile warmup from my house. 8:10 HR 138 and then started down Sunnyside from Foothill.

Mile 1: 5:23.45 HR 172 Descent 156 ft Ascent 38 ft
Mile 2: 5:35.14 HR 179 Descent 242 ft Ascent 160 ft
Mile 3: 5:43.05 HR 185 Descent 125 ft Ascent 87 ft
Mile 0.1: 0:38.68 HR 186 Descent 28 ft Ascent 12 ft

TOTAL: 17:20.32 Avg. 5:35 HR 179 Descent 551 ft Ascent 298 ft

Then two miles up 21st South home. 8:03 HR 163

Overall very happy with the run. It was pushing as can be seen from the HR. But I felt good afterwards. A really cool observation is that by the Course Tool and Sasha's amazing even effort calculator I was almost spot on! 1 sec off on the first mile, 4 sec off on the second mile, spot on the third mile and 4 sec off on the last piece.

I had the car today because I needed to start at 5am... But that meant I got to do an evening run which always seems quicker to me. I did SugarHouse loops 3X (grass) from home. It felt good and I was happy that my legs were not complaining after the hard run yesterday. It is nice to see some good mileage building again.

Avg. 7:28 HR 152

I'm probably pushing my luck with my mileage this week but I'm tired of playing around. I recently went back and started reading some of my entries and race reports from 2008 and I'm not sure how my training has changed so drastically. I know there are a number of contributing factors but I also remember the additional focus the truly hard training gave me. In any case the hard run on Tuesday combined with no knee/hip pain since has encouraged me to push the envelope a little more in the right direction. I'm not 100% ruling out a 2011 marathon but at the very least I want to be ready to hammer a spring marathon. Tonight was a run with a friend from work. We were both exhausted from busy work weeks but our conversation brought our planned 6-7 mile run up to nine miles finishing with a Heine at my house. 

Avg. 8:30 HR 133

Recovery day commute run in.

Avg. 10:31

It is always hard for me to comprehend how quickly time flies. I have these updates where I start to approach my old training volumes but it never really sinks in. Today sealed my longest week since the week ending Jan 23rd 2010. It is also the first time I have gone over 50 miles in a week this year... The two kind of go hand in hand but it is interesting to me to look at it both ways. My current plan is to try and hold 45-55 for the next 8 wk and then take it from there. I will heed Jake's advice and not also increase the intensity. Should be obvious but it never hurts to hear it again. As I am usually only doing one hard run a week it should be easy to do. I have managed to catch up on some sleep this weekend. Today in a turn of routine my wife got up to do her run in the morning and I slept in. After that I helped a friend move his house. I bit of good cross training and I got to see his twins. The day continued with some out of the normal routine with us cleaning and then me grilling for some neighbor friends. After all of that I hit the road right at sunset. It was a beautiful one tonight. It was the blood orange color in the north side of the valley over the Salt Lake. Then in the south side of the valley was a very active electrical storm. The contrast was very amazing. I did an extension off of the suicide loop 45th south and home. Overall a nice end to a reasonable training week. Best news is my knee/hip continued to behave. My left foot misbehaved a little but I can deal with that.

Avg. 7:29 HR 149