Sunday, January 25, 2009

Phase 3: week 3 of 5

Witness the dedication of your intrepid blogger as he posts from ATL airport. Dedication and the fact that I want to spend time with my understanding wife when I finally get home this evening. I've been in Miami this weekend - partly for the sun and the beach and partly for the Miami half-marathon. The start was at 6:15am this morning - which means that other than for a short nap on the first leg of my plane ride - I've been up since 4am.

The plan was to run at marathon pace - I didn't want to go all out because I have a hundred mile week coming up and it's still too early to push my body like that. The trick is to slowly stress my body so it can best perform on 4/20 - not to kill myself with three months to go. I even backed off from using 2:30 as my "marathon pace." So, I shot for a 1:16 - luckily another of the Falls Road team member (there were seven of us who made the trip), Brennan, had the same goal pace - so, we ran together for most of the race, which made it much easier.

I ended up running 1:16:18 - just above my goal pace. Which, all things considered (we stayed in South Beach), was fine. Even with the early start, it was a fun race and I'd consider doing it again. The challenge is going to be the workout on Tuesday. I'm running my longest tempo workout (4X2 miles) with only one day rest from the half - I'll probably not run quite as fast I've done my other tempo workouts - given it will be twice the tempo mileage. Other than running 100 miles in a week for the first time since the fall of 2007 - the rest of the week shouldn't be too bad.

Last Week
Monday morning: 4 miles
Monday evening: 9 miles
Tuesday: 16 miles
Wednesday morning: 4 miles
Wednesday evening: 11.5 mi fartlek with hills and 2X800 @ 2:31
Thursday: 10 miles
Friday: 11 miles 8X100
Saturday: 9 miles
Sunday: 17 miles - 13.1 at 1:16:18 (Miami half-marathon)
Total: 91.5 miles

This Week
Monday morning: 4 miles
Monday evening: 6 miles
Tuesday morning: 12 miles 4X2 mi at tempo
Tuesday evening: 4 miles
Wednesday: 15 miles
Thursday: 10.5 miles 10X100
Friday morning: 12 miles hills
Friday evening: 4 miles
Saturday: 10.5 miles
Sunday: 22 miles
Total: 100 miles

2 comments:

RM said...

Ben, what event is 4/21? That's going to be a tough double to come back the day after Boston Marathon (4/20) to do ANYTHING.

Ha, just kidding. I knew what you meant.

Good job this weekend!

Ben said...

oops - thanks to the edit button all is right with the world.