Warming Up

It's gotten very hot as of late. It's funny how you go back and read about the winter training days where one prays for the warm days of summer and now I'm wishing for the cooler training days of winter.

This past week of training has gone according to plan. I did 42 miles last week which included a 16 mile long run on Sunday with about 11 miles at a marathon pace effort which came out to about 7:35-7:50 min/mile pace. Ended up driving down to the lake to do it. I'm trying to avoid driving down to the lake to do long runs this year with the exception of marathon pace runs. I like to be able to get a continuous route down by the lake where I don't have to stop for traffic lights.

I've been using the Pfitz-first edition training plan, but remembered that the 2nd edition plan (which is presumably better) is slightly different. The 2nd edition plan had an early 13 mile run with 8 at marathon pace which I was supposed to do 2 weeks ago, but since I was following the 1st edition plan I didn't. I thought I'd try the 8 marathon pace miles this past weekend though. I ended up feeling pretty good after 8 miles so I just kept going to 11.

Yesterday had me supposedly doing 8 miles with 10 strides but I wanted to try an interval workout. Up in the morning and it was very warm and humid. Did 4x800m in 3:12, 3:10, 3:09 and 3:11 with a one lap jog recovery of 2:50 in between. There's a 5k race this weekend which I was thinking of doing in my quest to break the 20 minute barrier, but based on how I was feeling on this workout, I don't think I'm ready. It could just have been the warm temperatures, so one never knows. I may end up signing up anyways just to get the experience. There's also a 10 mile race which I was considering doing instead though since there's a $10 coupon available on the website for that. Still fairly pricey though, $70 for the 10 miler and $52 for the 5k. Tough call.