Rhett

6 on the trails

7 recovery

It was way too cold to go outside this morning so I did a 7 mile TM fartlek run, just because I wanted to say fartlek. :)  It was fun mixing up the speeds as well.  I haven't run 11 mph on the TM in a long time, but I liked it... for a quarter mile.

1 mile warm up

6 mile progression run: 1st mile at 8:30, last mile at 6:20. 

1 mile cool down 

1 mile warm up 

5 miles at 7:30

1 mile in 6:00

1 mile cool down 

Total 8 miles 

It’s been a crazy week with my wife out of town since Saturday but she returned home last night so I was able to get back to running in the morning instead of the evening. I did 5 miles up 1000 feet at an easy effort then ran back down at a little faster than mp effort. It felt good starting the day with a hard run. 

6 miles this morning nice and easy averaging right at 8:00.  The hot air balloon festival is this weekend here in Lake Havasu City and all the balloons are up in the air.  It's fun to see them all up in the air at the same time.

Since I hadn’t been to Blake’s new home yet, we thought it would be fun for me to come spend the weekend at his house and run the San Diego Trail Marathon together. It has been a great weekend, so fun to see him, his family, and his new stomping grounds. 

It rained all night Friday night and was still raining hard when we got up Saturday morning and drove to the race, but by the time the race started, it had stopped raining. It was very muddy though. We had determined to not race this race but instead to just run together and enjoy running together and we stayed with that the whole race. At one point Blake’s leg was tight so we walked together. Likewise when I felt a little nauseous he walked with me. It was just about doing this together. We weren’t fast, but we had fun. It was a great weekend.

Now it is time for me to get serious about running a fast marathon in April.

I took the last do days as rest days to recover from the marathon then did some recovery miles today. Since we ran the marathon so slow I have had no soreness post race so back to running tomorrow. 

5 miles up at an easy effort then 5 miles down at mp effort. It felt good to run fast. 

I'm trying to be smart with my recovery from the marathon, even though we ran slowly and I therefore have had no soreness at all, so I took another rest day yesterday and then did another nice easy 7 mile recovery this morning.  I'm itching to get in some good running though, so I'm thinking about something faster tomorrow.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do this morning other than I knew I wanted to do some faster miles. While I was warming up I decided some mile repeats sounded fun, so after 2 miles easy I did 4 x 1 mile at 6:07 with half mile recovery jogs totaling about miles. It was fun running faster than I have in a few months. 

7 easy miles

10 miles this morning. It was beautiful out today.

I'm feeeling like I've been lazy the last few weeks, but at the same time I think my body needed some down time after my crazy mileage month in December. Monday I start my Mt. Charleston Marathon training, so hopefully I'll be menatally and physically ready to get after it.

Today I did some faster running which felt nice.  After a 2 mile warmup, I did 2x2 mile repeats at 6:40 pace with 1/2 mile recovery jog for a total run of 7 miles.

I’m up in Utah for the weekend, so I texted my bro in law to see if he was running today. He was so I joined joined him for a nice 8 miler and we caught up on life. It went really fast. 

TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF MY 13 WEEK MARATHON TRAINING!

I actually felt a about as good as I ever feel on my ru this morning, probably from the mental boost of starting my marathon training for Mt. Charleston today. 

I did 8 easy but hilly miles followed by strides and cool down for a total of 9 miles. 

I'm thinking Tuesday and Thurday are going to be my recovery/core days for this training cycle.

7 miles recovery, then core.

When I was up in Utah over the weekend, I went to Runner's Corner and wore out the sales guy trying on all kinds of shoes in search of the perfect running shoe for me.  I really thought I would walk away with another pair of Kinivaras for the road and Altras for the trails.  I ended up going with New Balance 1400v6 for the roads and I wore them this morning and really liked them.  They have a 10 mm drop instead of the 4 mm the Kinivara has, yet I feel like they are more responsive with just a little less cushion and a nice wide toe box.  Hopefully the higher drop will help me with all the calf issues I've had lately. For my trail shoes I went with the Hoka Torrent. I've never liked any Hoka I've tried on before, too narrow in the toe box and way too squishy feeling.  These are totally differnt with a more responsive feel and a lager toe box.  I look forward to taking them out on the trails for a spin once all the scorpion weed dies out there.

Today I did a 14 mile run.  I ran the first 5 1/2 miles uphill at a comfortable pace.  I then ran 6 1/2 miles downhill, the first 5 at mp then I pushed the last 1 1/2 miles running them around 6:10 pace. I then finished with a 2 mile cool down back uphill. I was happy with how well the run went. I need to work on my feel for mp. I was about 10 seconds per mile too fast, but for my first fast finish long run of the training cycle, I'll take it.

7 recovery then core.