Sunday, February 24, 2013

Signed up for Richmond and back over 60 again

I signed up for the Richmond Marathon (November 16th) with a high school friend who's much faster than me.  My goal is to finish within a half hour of him, which won't be easy.  His best is 2:44 and he still typically runs around 2:50.

A lot of stuff going on in real life got in the way of running in January/February, but I got in some decent mileage.

  • week of 31 Dec.  28 miles in 4 runs.  New Years day 5k in 20:48.  Hilly race and I was sick with a cold that kept me sleepless.  Skipped the next 3 days of training.
  • week of 7 Jan.  48 miles in 6 runs.  My usual routes at ~10 - 10:30 pace with one treadmill run.
  • week of 14 Jan.  51 miles.  4 runs of 8 miles at 10:00-11:15 pace, one 8-miler a little faster (9:11), a 10 miler at 9:50, and an aborted run (1.35 miles).
  • week of 21 Jan.  50 miles. 10, 8, 8, 8, 0, 8, 8.  Pace was 10-10:30 except Saturday was faster (8:17).
  • week of 28 Jan.  53 miles.  8 every day except 5 on Monday.  10-11 pace except 8:53 on Thursday.
  • week of 4 Feb.  53 miles.  8, 9, 7, 8, 5, 8, 8.  Same as previous except slower.  4 runs 10:30-11 and 3 at ~10:00.
  • week of 11 Feb.  28 miles.  0, 0, 0, 7 (pm), 5, 8, 8.  10-11 pace.  Family emergency.
  • week of 18 Feb.  60.2 miles.  9, 8, 10, 7, 8, 8, 10.  9:45-10:25 pace except 9:16 on Sunday.
    • Started sort of following Bill Squires book (alpha phase, level 11, week 1) about halfway through week.
    • Thursday included 6 hill repeats (1:05, 1:06, 1:41, 1:08, 1:05, 1:37).
    • Did pickups on Sunday starting at 50 min.  Did 1', 1', 2', 1', 1', 2' faster on 5 minutes.  "Faster" was maybe HM pace.  Who knows?

This was my first week over 60 miles since 3/7/2011.  I averaged over 60 mpw in 2008 and only managed a 3:15 marathon, so getting within 30 min is going to be tough!

Weight was 167.8 after long run.  Need to lay off the cookies.