When I actually got around to looking at my training schedule for this week, I found that yesterday was supposed to have been a 7-mile single, not a 10-mile double (or 11-mile triple, which is what I actually ran). And tonight was supposed to be a 10-miler. So I flipped days, sorta, and ran 8 miles of GA on the dreadmill. Also was supposed to do strides tonight, but didn't; I'll put those on tomorrow night's run. Usually when I'm at the AC, I'm there at off-peak hours and not too many people are there. Tonight, it was peak time and the TMs were full -- but there was no line, so no one bugged me about hogging a machine for 72 minutes instead of the 30-minute limit. The woman on the TM next to me was interesting. She was running intervals or fartlek or something, and when she cranked it up, her leg turnover was something else. She HAD to be doing 200 strides per minute minimum; those little legs were a blur. Looked like one of those stupid commercials for Comcast cable internet (if you've never been subjected, consider yourself fortunate). She said she was going to run a leg in the Little Rock Marathon relay in two weeks. I think if she can maintain that turnover for 10K, she'll do quite nicely. Speaking of the LRM, today is the one-year anniversary of my first marathon at Little Rock. Undertrained, dumb as a box of rocks, hard-headed, you name it, I'm lucky I survived, much less finished. Fortunately, I learned from my stupidity and at least a few of my mistakes and managed to correct them for Memphis. After struggling to finish in 4:46, I'm reasonably certain that if I went out on a training run this weekend at a moderate pace and just kept going after the planned distance, I could easily finish 26.2 in 4:20 or less now. Definitely this was a good time for a stepback week. "Only" 64 sounds so easy after 80 and 76 the last two weeks. A year ago, I would have gone apoplectic if you'd told me I'd run 64 miles in ANY week, much less do it week after week after week. I topped out at 30 mpw for Little Rock, remember. Rest in peace, Adam Nickel. | 