Training, Week of 9/4

This was a fairly good week in terms of training.  I had hoped to run all seven days, but didn't get out for a run on Wednesday because I procrastinated while allowing excuses to pile up until I finally decided to bag the idea of a run.  I'm a little disappointed, but in spite of that, I still managed to run 50.3 miles in 6:03:07 (7:14/mile average).

The Thursday Night Track work-out was a good one for me, a 25-minute tempo run.  I have always liked tempo runs on the track because they allow me the opportunity to know exactly how quickly I am moving and to break the effort up into pieces that are trivially easy to complete by themselves so I don't ever think of the effort in its entirety.  I planned on running a little faster than 6:00/mile pace which I translated into running 200m sections in just under 45 seconds.  In this way, I only thought about running for 45 seconds at a time.  Using this strategy, I averaged 5:48/mile for a total of 7k in 25:11.  There were a couple other factors that helped me to have such a great workout:

• The other people participating in the workout helped a lot.  Though there weren't any that could keep up with me, it eased the toughness of the workout to be able to pass people almost continuously through the workout.  I lapped the entire field at least twice, with only a single exception (he was lapped once).  As the group that attends the workouts are diverse in age, ability, and training goals, there were options to finish the workout at 15 and 20 minutes, and once those people had finished their encouragement also helped me to continue.
• My pacing was extremely conducive to having a good workout.  Although I had a couple quick laps at the beginning of the workout due to general excitement, I settled into a pace which gradually accelerated throughout the whole workout.  It is counter-intuitive, but accelerating when my legs are very tired helps me to continue at a quick pace.

Cooling-down from a tempo run that has gone well is difficult because I usually feel so good I still want to run really quickly, though I was able to hold myself back and only run 7:01/mile pace!

I had Friday off from work this week, which I decided to use for my long run.  Though I was a little apprehensive about running the tempo and long run back-to-back, I decided that Friday was my best bet and planned out a run that was 17.7 miles long.  Unfortunately the weather was quite a bit warmer than I expected and my stomach was upset so I cut the run short to "only" 15 miles.  It still served the purpose that I intended so I was happy.

I did leave my nice, cushy Nike LunarGlide 2's in Vermont so I have been doing all of my running in the New Balance Minimuses.  I think this has resulted in some extra soreness so I'm looking forwards to being able to add the Nike's back into the shoe rotation.  All in all, a good week and I'm looking forward to maintaining the momentum into the next week!