week of 19 March

Mo - 4.11
Jog around neighborhood. Not nearly as sore as last Monday. Ice baths are good?

Tu - 8.8 miles
Bad run today. One neighborhood lap then to the 0.1-mile/lap school track. Planned to do something like 6-7 x 800m (5 laps) as Benji calls for. I was thinking that 800m seemed long and maybe I should cut it down. I don't understand why the rest of the program is time-based but not the intervals? Anyway, on the 5th lap of the first rep I aggravated my hamstring and called it off. Continued jogging and then for some reason to try some hills. This doesn't bother my hamstring nearly as much. Did 4 hills in 67-70 second, which I believe is 7:30-7:45 pace for that hill. On the fourth one, my form was getting ragged and I could feel my hamstring, so I called it off and did another nbhrd lap.

We - 4.0
Hotel treadmill. Blah.

Th - 11.7
1:45:35/154 (9:01 min/mi). Ran to work with some short tempo runs. I noticed my legs felt a little different. A little stronger. I'm going to pretend it was the hills on Tuesday. warmup 29:01/~138, 10:14/169 (max 172) pace unknown (6:50?), recover 5:22/152, 10:02/175 (max 179) pace unknown, recover 7:10/155 (longer b/c of light/roads), 10:30/171 (max 177) pace 7:23, cooldown 33:17/147. Last tempo was definitely the slowest. First was definitely the quickest. 6:50 seems too fast but that seems to be what gmap is telling me. Worst case is 7:08 which includes the time for me to pick up my blinky light that fell and assumes I stopped one intersection earlier than I think I did. My heart rates were relatively low for 10-mile pace. I was at 180 bpm by 10 minutes into Annapolis. As I was doing the tempo runs though I was thinking I would have a hard time maintaining that for 10 miles. Maybe something magical happens during a race or maybe this is the effect I've noticed where my heart rates are lower for a given pace as I'm tired, but I'm not able to average a higher pace.

Fr - 4.1
40:57/??? (9:58 min/mi) Usual nbrhd route. No HRM today. Just plodded along and ran about my usual time ~41 minutes. Little nagging pains. Felt my *right* hamstring just a little and a little pain below the inside, left ankle. My PF grabbed me in the car on the way to work. I think those stupid shoes (black, lace-up oxfords) I wore to work yesterday set me back. Weighed 159 this morning.

Sa - 4.1
39:42/136 (9:39 min/mi). Same route as yesterday. Legs felt better (not perfect) but this felt harder than I thought it should despite a pretty low heart rate. My pace, however, was better than expected. Weighed 161. Not sure why the gain. Ate some salty pizza last night and had a couple of diet drinks after running and before weighing myself.

Su - 20.3
3:10:30/147 (9:23 min/mi). 4 laps around the lake + out and back. Great run. The first lap felt like yesterday. I seemed to be breathing heavier than expected but my heart rate was low and the first laps was 44 minutes which is faster than the first lap the previous two weeks doing this route. The rest was a (relative breeze). The last lap+ was easier than last week. Over the three weeks, my pace has improved from 9:41 to 9:35 to 9:23 while my heart rate has dropped from 152 to 151 to 147. I'd be worried that I was overtraining and being tired was lowering my heart rate except that this didn't feel that hard. Nevertheless, I suspect I'm not going to be able to get in the 180s easily at Cherry Blossom. We'll see. Didn't feel the hamstring *at all* today. Took a cold water bath. Weighed 158 after running and after drinking 30-40 oz of liquids.

Miles
57 miles
Shoes
wc10-1: 285 + 36 = 321
wp6-1: 55 + 21 = 76
I wore the wp6-1 on 3 easy days and the hill day. I'll probably wear all this week except maybe one medium long run.