Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

Yep, those MGP long runs will take it out of you if you over do it. Sub 19 should definitely be in the cards for you. It will be colder than the one you ran in May, that is for sure.

Joe, don't UNDERESTIMATE the power of EASY pace runs-- I mean 8:30 to 9:00 for like 8 miles for a few days. RECOVERY will make a HUGE difference. It is not overtraining it is UNDERrecovery. I am just seeing a pattern of killer runs placed closed together and I want to just give my two cents/sense in as I totally bonked at SGM due to lack of recovery when my fitness matched what yours is currently. : D

Julie - excellent observation and point. Joe has been pretty good at sticking to slow recovery runs so I did not even look.

Joe - there is nothing wrong with taking 2 days off after an epic long run like you ran. Julie's advice is solid - take it easy - your legs will rebuild and get stronger from you hard runs if you let them. Push too hard and they won't recover and you will lose the benefit of your hard work. This is nothing you don't already know. :-)

Worn out??? I guess after all of the miles you have already done this week and still a 7:46 ave....NICE!! FastJOE!

A couple low mile easy days with some strides mixed in & I think you will crush a 5k Sat! Nice running & good luck!

I agree with above, run nice and slow, slow, slow and then kill the 5k on Saturday.

slow training. fast 5k. it's all in the wrist.

20 degrees.... wow it's cold out there! I've found out it takes at least a couple of days for me to recover from runs of 15+ miles. The way you've been running I wouldn't worry about much, just rest a little and go crush the 5K.

I hear what everyone is saying. I think I tend to run too many hard days in a row, although I don't count slow running as a hard day no matter how long I go. But I also wonder if (i) running hard consistently doesn't improve one's ability to recover more quickly, which is a training advantage, and (ii) how do you know when you are letting off the gas pedal too much? I ran a half in early November for which I was obviously overtrained, but other than that my problem going into big races seems to be not getting the same results I got on my long runs, even after a pretty good taper. Seems to me that one good strategy might be to run hard for two or three days in a row, then go easy for at least two days, or three.

Flat, it's hard to say unless one try's something like that and see how his or her body responds.

I am reading Ryan Hall's book Running with Joy and it is super interesting. The book is a day-by-day journal of his 14 week training leading up to Boston. He is all about the hard/easy principle with tempo runs, long runs with mgp, hill runs, and intervals. He runs his recovery/easy miles at 7:00-8:00 pace and this is a guy who runs 4:46 a mile tempo runs.

That's very interesting. Does he go hard (tempo, hills, speed, etc.) for two or three days in a row then take two or three easy days, or is he more likely to alternate back and forth? I'm thinking of trying the former method when I start up again in January.

No, it's the traditional hard and then easy - no back-to-back hard days.

A runner that I know well trained for Boston last year without much time during the week and ran a 3:03 - he said what helped was running a 10 mile the day after his long runs. I don't think he ran these hard but the mileage on top of the previous day provided the stimulus.

I ain't a coach by any means, however, for you I still think some regular 200-800m repeats would help with leg speed and turnover.

For sure I need more of those, didn't do too good on the speedwork my last cycle.

Thanks for the comments everyone, sorry, I've been absent a couple days...

Julie/dh - y'all are right, and I usually do sprinkle in more recovery runs. After I was kinda forced on Thursday/Friday to back off, I'm feeling a lot better.

Flat - I like doing a lot of moderate-paced running, but mostly because I'm too impatient to spend a lot of time at the slower paces I probably should be running.