The First Week of Training

I’m still hopeful that on 5/12/13 I’ll be putting up a post celebrating a <2:55:00 finish at the Providence Marathon. If I do that it will be at least a 22:31 PR which will instantly make what I’m doing for training at least somewhat interesting in that it will show what works. Otherwise, maybe a look at my training will be an example of what not to do. Either way; this probably won't be worth looking at until May, but here it is.

Here is my update about my first week of 4 months of training for Providence. I’ll start with an overview of the previous week.

1/7/13 – 1/13/13: 5 Runs, 1 Injury, 2 Unscheduled Rest Days, 29.73 Miles, 3:45:25.

• Monday: 7.32 Miles in 0:59:42. Ran around Fresh Pond in Cambridge. I skipped the muddy trail section of the loop (usually 7.50 miles). The road was fairly clear so I can’t blame my speed on the black ice that has been my bane recently; I was just flat out exhausted. My 16.12 mile long run the previous day and the 10 miles with tempo the day before took more out of me than I had expected.
• Tuesday: Reggie Lewis Track with Coach Toomey. 6x1000m. Scheduled pace of 3:32 per 1000m with 2:30 rest between intervals. I went a bit faster than I was supposed to; 3:24, 3:25, 3:23, 3:26, 3:22, 3:18. I only did 10 minutes warm up and 10 minutes cool down. In retrospect, going too fast and not warming-up or cooling-down enough probably wasn't a good idea.
• Wednesday: I woke up with pain and swelling in my right Achilles. Shit. It got worse all day. Skipped my MP run.
• Thursday: Achilles was supposed to get all better overnight or during the day on Thursday so that I could do my normal hills workout (8.56 miles, 800ft vertical gain). The Achilles didn't cooperate so instead I skipped my run again and made ravioli with a sauce made out of vine ripened tomatoes, fresh spinach, roasted red peppers, EVOO, garlic, pickled spicy onion and pan seared cod (plus various spices). I didn't run but at least Sarah and I ate well that night.
• Friday: The Achilles felt a bit better so I went out for a 1 mile loop at aerobic pace to test it out. 1.06 Miles in 8:55. I was dreadfully slow and my form was all over the place, but at least the Achilles didn't hurt any worse after the run than before.
• Saturday: 5 Miles in 36:29. On a normal week, this would have been 5 miles at MP (6:40 min/mile) bracketed on either end by 2.5 at aerobic. This wasn't a normal week; I was still babying the Achilles. I ran this with the Porter Square Run Club. Melanie from adidas came to let us try out some trainers. I did this run in Adizero Bostons. After the run we wrote reviews of the shoes and got free adidas running socks. The socks are quite good, but the Bostons weren't good shoes for me and my review showed it. Long story short, adidas is shipping me a pair of Adizero Adios to try out. Moral of the story: come run with the Porter Square Run Club (this is also where I met Lynn, EJ, Lauren, Bash and Bui who eventually convinced me to join GLRR).
• Sunday: 10 Miles in 1:19:19. I don’t think I've ever run 10 miles this slowly before. Nothing really hurt; I was just exhausted and never got the turnover going. Laps through the muddy section of the Fresh Pond loop didn't help me feel inspired for this run.

So that's where I was coming from when I started this week.

1/14/13 – 1/20/13: 5 Runs. 0 Injuries, 2 Scheduled Rest Days. 42.69 Miles. 5:11:01. (Time and distance not counting top secret Monday run).

•  Monday: Mike scheduled this one as a rest day. I probably needed it after how bad last week was. I might have run a few sneaky aerobic pace miles because I wanted to keep the legs moving…but shhhh, that’s our little secret (call it 3.06 at 7:50 pace).
•  Tuesday: Reggie Lewis Track with Coach Toomey. 2x 400m, 400m, 800m, Mile at target paces 85, 85, 2:52, 5:46 and rest 90, 90, 2:30, 4:00. As usual, I went out too fast. Basically what’s happening is that I’m having rounding errors when I check my splits every 100m and the error is propagating along to make my run too fast. Here were my splits: 83, 81, 2:46, 5:35, 80, 81, 2:43, 5:38. I did a good 15 minute warm up this week and did dynamic stretching before and after the workout.
• Wednesday: 4.44 in 30:00 MP run on the treadmill. The pavement around my house was a sheet of black ice when I got home from work so I wasn't interested in trying to do my 30 minute MP run outside. I went over to Planet Fitness in Porter Square for my first time in about a year. There was a line for the treadmills! New Years should be in the summer so that all these resolutioners are going when I’m safe to run outside!
• Thursday: Hill workout! 11.61 miles with >2500 feet of elevation change in 1:30:14. I got my free adidas Adizero Adios trainers and took them out for this run. They were really good…they’ll get their own post!
• Friday: Schedule called for a rest day. I took this one. I really wanted to get out in the Adios a second time but I needed to do laundry and pack for the trip to NC with Sarah.
• Saturday: 10.30 miles in 1:13:55. Two miles easy, 6.6 miles of tempo on the trails and then two miles easy back to Sarah’s grandparents’ place. It was nice to be out running in shorts and a t-shirt! A (probably not) interesting note about my running log is that at the end of this run my YTD time spent running was exactly 15:30:00; it doesn't mean anything but round numbers very rarely show up in my log.
• Sunday: 8.20 miles in 1:03:04. This was supposed to be twice as far but my Achilles was barking. I’d rather take it easy and get it healthy than push a long run too hard four months out and put myself on the shelf.

Also good news from this week; Mark sent me a code to get $20 off of my registration for Providence! Score! More good news is that I didn't get laid off on Thursday (and neither did Mark, David, Phillip or Paul so it looks like the core of the Axcelis Running Team will still be here for the JP Morgan Challenge). Mark and David will also be running Providence with me…in a few months I’ll probably put together a list of names and bib numbers to track but that’s quite a ways off.

1 week down and 16 weeks left until Providence!

May your training miles be ever hilly and may all your races have free beer!