2 miles up, 5 mile race (at tempo pace - 6:08 avg), 1 down Felt pretty good except that Bedoukian was feeling better. I know he is gonna say this is the turn of the tide or whatever, but its plain and simple to me--he was more fresh. He correctly took time off to recovery from a slight achilles tendon issue. I felt fine so I stuck to my 70mpw plan. I felt fine and stayed with him until 3.5 at which point he started dropping sub-6's and I wasn't game. I could have stuck with it but I don't think it would have been smart. As it was it was 77 degrees out and I was running faster than I had planned (6:10-6:15 pace). He also is thinking about coming out and trying to break 29 in the 5 mile, but I don't want to all out race anything over a mile in 70+ weather. I am not very concerned that the next time I race 5 miles all out I will break 29.
Now its recovery and then the trail marathon. I am running through this one. No real taper, but probably a good carb load. I am going to run it harder than a training run, but easier than a race for sure. My plan is to stay with sharkey (a 57 year old trail runner who is darn good for his age, but about 5-6 minutes behind me for a trail half marathon) through the half and then re-evaluate. If I am feeling good, I may drop him. If it feels hard then I will just try to hold. I am really only doing this because it sounded like fun. The idea was to not race it. But I hate giving bedoukian something like a 20 min lead on me (which is what it would be if I went fairly easy) because he is planning on racing it. And on top of that, he is better tapered. But there is a time for racing, and that has passed for this season. We took full advantage of it and now it is time to get back to consistent training. I don't think that this will help bedoukian in the long run, but I didn't think we would be getting better so quickly as we have while racing very often. What do you all think? Is it beneficial to race often (say, every week, varying distances everything from the mile to the marathon)?
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