This past week was my last one of basebuilding before I officially begin a 24 week training plan for the Lean Horse 100 on August 27th. I guess it's fitting that I close out basebuilding with my highest mileage week in quite some time.
Sunday - 10 miles
Monday - 6 miles in the morning, 5 in the afternoon.
Tuesday - 10 mile progression run. I ran the same loop that I always run for this workout but I ran it backwards. It seemed like it was harder that direction because of where the hills are located, but my overall average pace actually ended up being faster than the last time I did a progression run.
Wednesday - 8 miles in the morning, 6 in the afternoon. I fully intended to run a full 14 in the morning, but I was thwarted by several inches of fresh snow. On some streets, there weren't even tire tracks to follow, I was just blazing my own trail. Eventually, that took it's toll and I was pretty whipped by the time I returned home after 8 miles. By the time I ran the 6 miler in the afternoon, most of the snow had melted off and the streets were mostly just wet.
Thursday - 10 miles. Kind of a repeat of yesterday except the roads were more slick than snowcovered. I would've been better off with ice skates on some stretches.
Friday - 21.2 miles. Finally, the weather broke and it was actually fairly nice outside (sunny, mid-40s). I mapped out a huge 21 mile loop on mapmyrun.com and headed out. Several miles of this loop were totally foreign territory to me. One of the dangers of running on roads you've never been on before is you don't really know what the terrain is like. The first 8 miles of this looped featured almost constant ups and downs, with more up than down. At one point, just before reaching the high point of the loop, I passed a sign that said "Minimum Maintenance - Travel at Your Own Risk). Awesome. And they weren't lying. The next mile or so of road was sloppy, muddy, slushy, snowy and rutted from where people had attempted to travel at their own risk. It was actually kind of fun. After that section I had a net downhill for the remainder of the run (13 miles) but for some reason I hit a rough patch at around 15-17 miles. Don't really know why, but my slowest splits were in that stretch and then I recovered a little and managed to finish the last few miles fairly strong.
Saturday - 8 miles. Felt remarkably good after the tough long run the day before.
Total - 84.2 miles
So, there you have it. Basebuilding is done and now the real work begins. I probably won't be logging any higher mileage than what I have during basebuilding, I'll just be structuring my weeks differently. Mondays will be rest days and Tuesdays through Fridays will be fairly easy mileage with no runs longer than 10 miles. I plan on doing some sort of quality work (tempo run, intervals, progression run) every Wednesday to keep my legs from getting to used to the slow easy pace I'll be running the rest of the week. The bulk of my weekly mileage from here on out will come on the weekends, with a long run (25-40 miles) on Saturday and a shorter run (up to 15 miles, depending on how long Saturday is) on Sunday. I'd like to start doing some of those weekend runs on trails if the friggin snow would ever melt off. The basic idea is that I need to start teaching my body to move forward for longer periods. Hopefully it wants to learn. Otherwise this is gonna suck.
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