Monday, January 28, 2008

Back in the saddle

After coming down with a two day bout of the flu last week, I managed to bounce back this week and lay down a solid week and a new weekly mileage high. Also, Mother Nature finally relented somewhat and I was finally able to head outdoors on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This, after 10 days and 1,102 laps on the indoor track. If I never see that damn track again, it'll be too soon (and it looks like I have a date with it tomorrow, based on the weather forecast). Anyhow, here's how week 4 of my training plan went:

Monday - 6 miles recovery. I was supposed to run a double that included another 4 miles in the afternoon, but I was still feeling the effects of the flu and the morning 6 miler pretty much rendered me useless for the rest of the day (unless you can find something useful about being planted in the recliner and watching a Dirty Jobs marathon on Discovery).

Tuesday - 10 miles w/ 10x100m strides. Finally, I feel like I can actually run again.

Wednesday - 14 miles. One of the harder medium-long workouts in awhile. Probably due to the fact that I ran Tuesday's 10 in the late afternoon and then turned around and did the 14 early the next morning, so I totaled 24 miles in a 14 hour period.

Thursday - 6 miles recovery.

Friday - 12 miles. Back outside!! The miles go by so much faster when you're not thinking of them in 11.5 lap chunks.

Saturday - 6 miles recovery in the morning and 4 more in the afternoon. Making up for missing the four on Monday. It was actually borderline warm outside.

Sunday - 19 miles. The wind was blowing approximately 20 mph with higher gusts, but I wasn't about to wait around until 1 PM for the gym to open so I could run 218.5 laps around that damn track, so I braved the elements and it ended up working out pretty well. I ran three loops around town, which only left me running into the wind without any buildings for shelter for approximately 4 miles total. Those 4 miles sucked ass, but the other 15 went great, so it was worthwhile.

Total - 77 miles. A new weekly high, but not for long (knock on wood).

I also dropped 2.2 pounds (maybe the flu helped with that?, I didn't puke, but I also didn't feel much like eating). At 204.6, I'm now down 6.5 pounds for the year and flirting with the 190's. And, even now, I feel like my easy pace has gotten easier. Not sure if that's due to my increased mileage over the last few months or the lost weight, but I'll take it.

1 comment:

Willis said...

Man, just when I think I'm hardcore for running at night, you take it to a whole new level by running on an INDOOR TRACK not for a few days, but for WEEKS. That's insane - I'd much rather have a TM over those endless turns!

Strong work thus far. It's too bad that there are a bunch more winter weeks still ahead - I think you'll be flying once the sun comes out and you can wear shorts and a T-shirt outside again.