Fourth week down.

Well, if my 15km PR of 56:42 last week whispered that I have more PRs to come this spring, my track workout on Tuesday shouted in agreement. I’m officially keeping my Marathon Goal at <2:55:00 for now but Mike and I will revisit that in March after the New Bedford Half Marathon. Based on that goal, my MP and Tempo Run speeds will stay the same for now, but based on this week’s track workout I should be able to adjust those paces next month if I can get my long run on track.

02/04/13 – 02/10/13: 6 Runs, 0 Injurys, 1 Scheduled Rest Days, 53.23 Miles, 6:40:13.

• Monday: 4.08 miles in 0:32:26. The Stew Chase 15km felt easy while I was running it but I was definitely sore on Monday morning. Mike scheduled me for 30 minutes at Recovery Pace (~8 min/mile). In terms of my running, I started feeling a lot better during this run and at 2 miles I briefly thought about going for 5 instead of the prescribed ~4. By the time I was running towards Spy Pond into the wind my fingers and face had gone a bit numb from the cold so I was grateful that I could stop at 4 miles without cutting short the scheduled workout.
• Tuesday: Track Workout at Reggie Lewis with Mike. Scheduled workout: 3x Mile at 5:40, 6x 400m at 1:20 with 3:00-4:00 rest after the miles and 1:30 rest after the 400s. Actual workout: 2.75 mile warm up (the HS track meet would not end so I kept warming up longer than I usually would). 2x 400m Strides in 1:27 and 1:21 with 60 sec rest. 3x Mile in 5:26, 5:22 and 5:24 with 3:30 rest. 6x 400m in 1:14, 1:19, 1:17, 1:16, 1:18 and 1:17 with 90 sec rest. 1.5 mile cool down (it was late and I wanted to go home so I did .5 less than I usually would). The ~5:24 miles felt smooth and easy despite racing just 2 days before and left me feeling like I need to get out and race again to start picking up some new PRs.
• Wednesday: 7.50 miles in 0:51:02. This was a Marathon Pace day. I did 2 miles warm up, 5 miles at 6:40 and then 0.5 miles of cool down. I had planned for a 2 mile cool down but hit a “mile 14” a bit early and by the time I returned from my Pit Stop I decided that I was fully cooled down and that doing another 1.5 would have been miles simply for the sake of miles so I called it a day.
• Thursday: Thanks to the storm I got out of work late and then stuck in traffic which pushed my hill run to Friday.
• Friday: 10.05 miles in 1:25:48. I did 4x Park Ave for my first hill workout in a long time and it reminded me of that fact. This was a tough one but I made myself do the whole thing even though it was slower than I wanted.
• Saturday:  What blizzard? I drove some screws into my old Pure Flows and did 10.07 on Mass Ave in 1:19:40. I tried to do some Fartleks up in Lexington but even with the screws I was sliding around a little on the slush so I backed it down and made it an easy pace run.
• Sunday: 12.29 miles in 1:32:12. I had no motivation to run today. I finally made it out in the afternoon and did a 3 mile loop around Spy Pond. I was in danger of running a couple more laps for 9 and calling it a day but fortunately I ran into EJ on Mass Ave and we took a loop through Somerville up and over Winter Hill a couple times and back through Davis. The sun was setting as we were getting back to Arlington and it was getting slick so I called it a day a bit short.

The screws worked okay, but I hear that sheet metal screws would have given me better traction.

I officially found out that I’m off to Korea next weekend. I’m going to try to get back late Saturday night before the Jones 10 Miler so I should still be in for the race but we’ll see how I run with jet-lag  I’ll be staying in Seoul this time so we’ll see if I can find anywhere to run outside.

4 week down and 13 weeks left until Providence (or the Maine Coast Marathon if I pull the trigger on the switch)!

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