Week 16 & 15

A short recap:

Week 16:
84 miles (recovery week)
5×1000, 5x200m cut downs
Long tempo workout that I nailed (did alone, and didn’t even stop! Yeah!) – recap here.

Week 15:
109 miles
24 mile run with 3 cut down miles (20, 21, 22) at 6:30, 6:15, 6:00.
4×2 miles MP with .5 mile recovery (20 miles total)
3 doubles

I experienced a definite “fatigue” last half of week 15.  I can tell it’s just my legs responding getting back to more significant mileage.  I am getting stronger and more fit, but it just takes time – one day at a time, right?  I knew toward the second half of the week that I’d struggle with the 4×2 mile workout (the easy runs Thurs and Fri were really slow and I sometimes even stopped to walk up hills – my calves were very tired, felt swollen), and I did.  I couldn’t move my legs fast enough to engage my lungs.  I think most miles were slower than 6:30?  Ug!  Brenden was in town to do the workout with me and I couldn’t remotely keep up.  Oh, well.  Have to break myself down in order to become stronger, right? 

I nailed the 24 mile run, which is a confidence booster.  I am strong enough to handle long runs like this and bring paces down toward the end of the run.  Granted, the faster miles were indoors on a treadmill since footing around here isn’t great, but still.  I’ll take it!

The only other update would be that I decided not to pursue the CA course.  I just had a day to pull everything together, trying to arrange a decently priced flight, trying to contact coaches to shadow, etc.  Plus, I’d ideally like to meet coaches like this after I’ve shadowed a lot of other local and regional coaches, have had more experience with my current athletes, and GAC and Carleton training plans so I can come with very specific questions and applicable experiences.  I’d also want to book a lunch with the speakers to pick their brains on training programs and feel like at this point I just don’t know enough to make the absolute best out of that opportunity (it has sped up my studying of my new coaching books, though!  Although that Martin/Coe book is quite daunting…).

That’s it for now.  Hard workout on tap for tomorrow, eek!