Last week of training

Fortunately my training has been going fairly well since the 1/2 marathon and I'm back into the swing of things and had some good workouts this week. Last Sunday, on Halloween, I did my long run and ran 14 miles early Sunday morning. I felt pretty good and averaged about 6:53 pace. The weather was nice in the mid-50's and I only had one water break at the midway point of the run.

Monday morning I made it out to the Kenyan Way hills workout. The weather was much warmer - 70 degrees and humid and we had a 5 x 1000m workout with two big uphills on each 1000. The first one was a little slow at 3:40 as I was still getting warmed up, but the next 4 were 3:30, 3:26, 3:26, 3:25. I think the times were similar to the last time I had run this workout, but somebody commented that the weather was better the last time we had run the workout. I did a total of about 8 miles on the day.

Tuesday - ran an easy 5 miles and spent a while doing stretching and conditioning work after the run.

Wednesday - Met Dan at the park for a progressive run at 5:00 am. After a 3.5 mile warmup, The goal was to do 6 miles starting at 6:45 and dropping 15 seconds a mile and finishing at 5:30. We were right on pace until the sub 6:00 miles. We hit the next to last mile in 5:52 and I finished the last mile in about 5:37. It was a tough workout, but went fairly well. After a mile cooldown I finished with about 10.5 miles.

Thursday - I ran a relaxed 7 miles with a co-worker at lunch. Neither of us had a watch, but the weather was nice and we probably were under 7:00 pace

Friday - no running. I went to MSHC for a treatment on my achilles which has been a little tight since I ran the Hillie Billie relay. It doesn't hurt while I run, but it just feels a little tighter and takes a while to loosen up and I don't want it to turn in to anything major

Saturday - 18.5 miles

I had a really good long run with nice weather - low to mid 40's. Andrew, Jena, Dan and I broke away from the rest of the pack midway through the run and we had a good run. I finished with a couple of quick miles on the cloverleafs and averaged about 6:50 pace for the run. I think that is the longest run that I've done this marathon training season.