The Next Step

This is my first entry on the fastrunning blog. I have been blogging for several months and got pretty discouraged with the feedback from the blog. I am a middle of the pack runner and would like to get faster so I started the blog hoping to get some serious feedback about my running. What I found was that most bloggers stop by say a few encourging words and move on. The other thing that I am looking for is feedback from people that have experience and know something about training. I have read a fair amount on training but want to learn from other experience. I hope that this blog site is more geared for this kind of discussion. So here goes...

Today I did a very easy 4 miles. I just ran a half marathon last Saturday (1:34) and wanted to take a few recovery days before jumping back into my training. I did 5 miles yesterday and my legs were a little sore. Today they felt much better so hopefully I am on the way to recovery. I am planning a couple of more falls races (5k & 10k) before I go into the winter base building phase. So my plan is recovery this week and then back into training for the 10k next week.

4 miles, 32:32

Keeping with the recovery plan for this week, I did an easy 8 miler today. It was a great morning to run (around 48 degrees) and I felt really good. It was one of those days when you feel like you can really push the pace without any problem. Even though I wanted to run fast I tried to stick with my plan and keep it easy. Hopefully, what this is telling me is that I am recovering from the race last Sat and will be ready to go next week when I start working on my 10k speed.

Tomorrow will be a rest day since we are planning a day with the kids for their fall break.

8 miles, 64:39, 8:05 pace, 148 avg HR

My kids are on fall break from school so we are out of town and trying to spend some quality family time. I was able to squeeze in 4 miles today on the treadmill at the hotel. It was very easy with nothing much to report on. Just looking forward to getting back into serious training next week.

Today I did my first long run since the half marathon and it felt really good. I started out at a pretty easy pace and it seemed like each mile was faster as I went along. I settled into around 7:45 pace after about 4 miles and heart rate was staying below 70% which is what I wanted to do. This pace is faster than my normal easy pace but my heart rate is the same as it has been for other long runs. I think this is a result of two things: 1. better conditioning 2. better weather. Here in the midwest we have had very hot and humid fall so we are just starting to benefit from better running weather. Today it was 50 degrees and a misty rain.

I feel like I have done a good job of recovering from the half marathon so I am going to get back into normal training. I am going to try to increase my mileage and sprinkle in some faster runs. I am looking at two more races this fall before the winter sits in. I am planning a 10k in early Nov and a 5k in early Dec. I ran my PRs in these races a couple of years ago and I want to compare my conditioning now to what it was when I set the PRs.

10 miles, 1:18:49, 7:53 avg, HR avg 151