Week 3 - Progress

The third week of my Summer/Fall 2011 training schedule is in the books. Total mileage just a bit over 70 which is more where it should be. The 80 was a blip on he radar last week. this brings up a conversation I had on a run last week. One sure sign of a rookie runner or coach is exact numbers on a training schedule or diary. I remember when I was a rookie and would try to hit 100 mile weeks in college. (Yes, in running, we're rookies longer than in any other sport. Some people go their entire careers as rookies.) I would do silly things like tack on extra mileage to a long run or warm ups and warm downs or even sneak out for a an extra run on Sunday to get the magic number. Then, with some help, I realized that training this way allowed the tail to wag the dog. The individual workouts and runs were what was important and they added up to whatever they added up to. To make the mileage more important than the runs was totally backwards. Now my mileage is all over the place week to week. If I'm up around 100 miles, I could hit anywhere between 95 and 105. Right now I'm aiming not at any mileage whatsoever but rather an hour of running a day. More workouts, a second long run, or faster paced running will put me up around 80. A down week like this coming week will probably yield only about 60. Last week I hit 72. I had a great road tempo run which was probably a slightly long four miles at sub 6 pace. (Closer to 5:50 actually). I had a great fartlek interval workout at Lake Padden which got me down around 5k pace for awhile but also gave me another run of 5.2 miles at 6 flat pace. Sunday I resurrected my hill climbing skills by going up to Cedar Lake (a roughly 1200 foot climb) and then back down via the newly constructed raptor Ridge. I'm pretty stoked about Raptor Ridge opening up as it really gives more access to the back section of Chuckanut for when my long runs get legit again. I guess 2 hours yesterday is kind of legit but at some point they'll be up to three hours again and I already have a couple courses picked out to keep things interesting. I also got my 16x100 - barefoot - in on Friday and they went far better than the week before. So out of seven days I got two hard quality days, one medium quality day and a long run and still felt pretty good on the trail this morning. Also had four solid lifting days. No real pains, feeling pretty good as I head into my down week this week. Down weeks are mixed blessings as they often serve as test weeks. So while I get to drop the mileage a bit, I have a test workout on Wednesday and a time trial on Saturday. Hopefully they'll go well and serve as confidence boosters. It's been a month since I did both of those in the suffocating heat and humidity of Connecticut so i look forward to big improvements. We shall see!