Getting back to Boston

Routine 5-miler. Legs felt much better than I expected after a good night's sleep; barely any ache at all. Try to do another 20 Sunday after I get back from Fedvul, and hope the weather cooperates as expected.

Seven-mile progression run capped off by six 100-m strides. Strides felt nice and smooth at 8+ mph. Probably started out too slow, but legs were a little achy and I thought it prudent to ease into the run. By the time I got to the strides, I was running at 7.2, which is, what, 8:25 pace or so.

My week's mileage is going to be skewed by the fact that I won't be running my LR on Saturday. I may do a quick run Friday night just so I don't take off two straight days; then again, two days off might be just the ticket before another 20 on Sunday. Then I'll probably take the rest of next week fairly easy before running the 20K on the 27th.

So this was supposed to be a good, hard 11-mile run with six miles of LT. Uh, no. About a half mile into the tempo portion, I started getting new twinges I'd never had before -- right groin and inner thigh. Quickly decided five more miles of tempo, even if doable, was not worth a big muscle pull or something similar, and shut it down. And the 11-miler became basically an 8-mile jog.

Another new pain I need to figure out. Low on my left calf, posteriorly. Pretty sure this one is my soleus. It responds when I do a soleus stretch, but it continues to ache. Doesn't hurt when I run, but it does afterward (especially the next morning).

So this stuff brings into question the planned 20K next weekend. Do I need to push that hard? The 20K basically replaces a scheduled marathon pace run, so if I'm going to stick to the schedule, I might as well run it. Or do I just want to back off to a 16-miler? Assess for the rest of this week, I guess, and I can just sign up later.

Felt a lot better today, even though work was considerably more demanding. So I turned a scheduled 4-mile GA into a 7-mile tempo run. The right groin twinge of last night reappeared during the warmup run, but only for a few seconds, and never returned. If it had acted up, I would have shut down the tempo run just like last night. Instead, I did a little progression on the tempo (as I took the initial pace down just a tad because of last night's twinges) -- 0.8 miles at 8:00 pace, 0.8 at 7:53 pace, 0.4 at 7:47 pace, 1.0 at 7:41 pace, then a half-mile jog, then 1.0 at 7:30 pace.

So now I'm caught up on my training schedule for the week, with the exception that I've done 4.8 miles of LT instead of 6.0. I guess I could throw 1.2 miles of LT into tomorrow night's MLR. Or not. We'll see how I feel. Then I probably need to do a quick 5 Friday night so that my two-week total will come out right, since I'm doing Saturday's LR on Sunday (that 5 will replace the Sunday recovery run). Five on Friday would bring this week's total to 38, which leads me to the topic of next week. 

I've still gotta figure out how to adjust next week to allow me to have some kind of decent run on the 27th at Benton (I mailed in my registration today). I gotta have some kind of taper. The whole purpose of Benton is to prove to myself that my training enables me to hold goal pace for a prolonged period, and thus build my confidence, and I can't do that with dead legs.

Currently the schedule calls for 9 with strides on Monday, 6 on Tuesday, 13 on Wednesday, 5 on Thursday with strides, then 16 with 12 at MP on Saturday. Maybe 5 on Monday (recovery from Sunday), 8 on Tuesday, 6 on Wednesday with strides, then the 20K with some warmup and cooldown. With 20 on Sunday, that's still 53-55 miles in the week, depending on how much warmup-cooldown I do. Hard to imagine a 55-mile week including some taper, but that what I have. Besides, my biggest running week to date before I got into this plan was a taper week -- four light jogs and a marathon, totaling roughly 38.5 miles.

Then I need to adjust the following week to allow some recovery time from Benton. Current schedule: 5-9(VO2)-3-11-7-off-13. Maybe 5-5-9(VO2)-7-11-off-13 would be adequate. Or maybe 5-5-5-9-11-off-13. Or just play it by ear and how my legs feel.

Sometimes I really surprise myself. Didn't sleep worth a darn last night, pretty worn out when I got home from work, had to cook dinner because Pam went to visit a friend, could have easily cooked and gone to bed. Instead I waited my hour or so for dinner to settle, then went for a little 13-mile run. And darn if I didn't run it faster than any 13 I've ever run, including the first half of Little Rock.

I got off to a stutter-start, running 0.11 miles before realizing I needed to stretch and, uh, do some other stuff. Once I got that taken care of, I got back on the TM and was going to finish the last 12.89. Then I realized if I did the full 13 after the interruption, that would give me a half-mary -- 13.11. So I did. As I usually do on TM runs, I did it in progression format, starting at 9:40 pace and working my way up. I ran the last two laps at MP, but most of the second half of the run was at 9:05 and 8:57 pace. Wound up finishing in 2:02:10, including the minute-10 of the stutter start, a 9:19 average. Not bad for being tired before I started. Now I'm REALLY tired. Off to bed.

Quick four miles around the neighborhood at 5 a.m. before leaving for the football game. Through the mall parking lot, down McCain to Fairway, up Fairway through Somers, then take the McClanahan loop and back to the hacienda. Left soleus is a little achy, and it was misting and thus humid, but not a long enough run to get into any heat problems. Just basically wanted to shake out the kinks before going to Fayetteville -- and, OCD here, not take off two days in a row. Still plan 20 tomorrow.