5 miles easy, weights and core work

I did some weights and core work at lunch on Monday and then went running in the evening after work. In my past experience, I've found that doing weights on a a fairly consistent basis helps me recover from injuries and stay injury free. I focused more on my legs and did a lot of core work and stretching. After work I was contemplating doing a hill workout on a treadmill. I decided to go outside and do a 4 - 5 mile warmup and see how everything felt. Part of me really wanted to get in a good hill workout and 9 - 10 miles total, but I also know that one workout isn't going to make or break Boston for me and I don't want to do anything dumb. I tend to be kind of hard headed sometimes and keep training until my body forces me to take a break. I ran the 5 miles at about 7:30 pace and my hamstring felt decent, but my legs were just exhausted from 40 miles in 3 days and lifting at lunch. I also knew that the last time I did a long run on the hills in Conroe Sean told me not to do hills on Monday so I decided to call it good at 5 miles and spend some extra time stretching. I think that I will do my hard workout on Tuesday this week and see how I feel. If things are feeling good at the end of the week, I will probably try to run a 5k, if not, I'll just stick to doing my regular mileage and trying to stay healthy.

7.5 miles easy

I ran just over 7.5 uneventful miles at Memorial Park Sunday evening in 56 minutes - avg 7:25 pace. The first mile was a little slow and after about mile 2 I settled into about a 7:20 pace for the rest of the run. My hamstring felt kind of tight most of the run. It didn't get sore like it had previously, but I could definitely feel something there for most of the run. Other than that I felt pretty good. I didn't seem too sore or tired after the 24 miler. I was contemplating doing about 9 miles once I got midway through the run, but after doing about 40 miles over the last 3 days I didn't feel the need to add on to the run. Lots of stretching and foam rolling after the run. I was thinking of running a 5k this coming weekend, but I'm not so sure about it now. We'll see how I'm feeling on Thursday and Friday. I seem to be able to put in the miles without aggravating it too much, but the speedwork worries me a little bit. The 24 miles with 6 hard at the end on Saturday definitely was tough on my legs.

24 miles in Conroe

24 miles in 2:44:31. Last 6 miles attempting to run close to marathon pace.

Today was a tough run. I'm glad I got it done, but it wasn't what I would consider a fun run. I was kind of hoping it would be raining when I got up so I'd have a legitimate excuse not to go. I have to get up at 4:30 am to get up to Conroe for a 6:00 start. My body still seems to be a little tired from the Texas Independence Relay last weekend. Unfortunately for my excuses, the weather was fine so I headed up there. Fortunately Sam came up so I didn't have to do the run by myself. Sam said he was going to take it relatively easy the first 19 miles or so and pick it up at the end. The temperature was in the low 40's this morning so I wore shorts, a long sleeve base layer and a fluorescent green shirt so hopefully cars would see me and not run me over. I started out with gloves, but ditched them after a couple miles at one of the places I had put a bottle full of gatorade. We ran a little bit different route than the last time we were up in Conroe and I think it added some more hills to it. Near the one of the roads we were running down, one of the guys up there was coming the other way and said he hadn't gone all the way to the end because there was a dog out there. We could hear him barking in the distance and we turned around when it started getting louder. I didn't really care to have a run in with a dog. My hamstring definitely felt tighter today in the cold weather and probably because I didn't stretch it enough at the end of yesterday's run in the cold. I stopped for about 45 seconds midway through the run to stretch it out some and that helped. I put some icy hot on my legs with about 7 miles to go since both of them felt like they were getting tired and a little sore. We started picking it up with about 6 miles to go and Sam took off at a faster pace than I could hang with. The last 5 miles of the run were also the hardest 5 miles with the most hills in them of the entire run. I was contemplating doing a couple miles on a different road without as many hills but I decided that would be wimping out and I was going to run hard on the tough hills to finish. My goal was to run the last 6 miles at 6:15 - 6:17 pace, but with the hills I figured it would be a little slower. I ended up averaging just under 6:20/mile for the last 6 which I was happy with considering I felt like my legs were tired the whole run and we were running on some serious hills. I can't imagine heartbreak hill being tougher than one of the hills we went up which was at least a 1/2 mile long. The cool weather definitely makes a ton of difference and helps keep my heart rate down. Here are my splits and HR's:

1 - 7:34, 143
2 - 7:00, 152
3 - 7:25, 155
4 - 6:50, 151
5 - 7:22, 154
6 - 7:05, 150
7 - 6:47, 150
8 - 6:55, 151
9 - 7:07, 156
10 - 7:14, 159
11 - 6:51, 152
12 - 6:54, 151
13 - 6:58, 154
14 - 7:00, 157
15 - 6:58, 159
16 - 7:06, 160
17 - 6:55, 157
18 - 6:36, 167
19 - 6:17, 171
20 - 6:30, 172
21 - 6:21, 174
22 - 6:29, 176
23 - 6:17, 176
24 - 6:04, 177

You can basically figure out the miles with hills, at least in the first half of the run by my splits and heart rates. I definitely never really felt aerobically limited. My HR tends to get up into the 185 - 187 range when I'm hitting my aerobic limits. Today it was all my tired legs that were limiting me. I'm happy with the run. I finished in under 2:45 and was able to finish strong. I think I could have added on a couple more miles at 6:30 pace so basically I could have run a marathon on the hills in Conroe today about 5 minutes faster than my Houston marathon time. Only one more really long run before Boston in 5 weeks.

8 miles in the cold and light rain

Brrrrr. It was chilly out there. When I started my run, the temp was in the mid 40's with 90% humidity and the windchill was about 40. The first mile or two were kind of cold and I had to pull my hands inside the sleeves on my shirt. After 1-1/2 - 2 miles I was warmed up enough that I could pull my hands out and run without any problems. The park was really empty. I think I've gone running at 9:30 pm and seen more people than were out there about 1:00 pm today. The run was pretty uneventful. I did the 8 miles in 55:23, about a 6:55 average. I finished the run at about 6:40 - 6:45 pace. Tomorrow I'm heading up to Conroe bright and early for 24 miles as long as it isn't raining a bunch. If it is raining hard up there when I get up, I think I'll just stay down here and run sometime when it isn't raining. My hamstring hasn't bothered me at all this week which is good news and everything else seems to be doing ok. The next 3 weeks are going to be pretty exhausting with two 24 milers planned and several high mileage weeks getting ready for Boston.

6.5 miles on treadmill

It was pouring outside at lunch and windy and about 50 degrees. I saw two crazy guys head outside to run in the rain, but I figured I'd rather endure the boredom of a treadmill than get thoroughly soaked and cold. I set the treadmill on random so it changed the incline throughout the run which made it a little more interesting. I wish that when it jacked the incline up to 4 or 5 degrees, it would also slow the pace down. I would have to slow the pace down on the hill parts and then speed it up again as it got flatter...kind of like a real run. I did just over 6.5 miles in 46 minutes which was about as long as I could take on it.

A couple updates/clarifications on some of my previous posts. My team got 9th overall in the Texas Independence Relay. If we hadn't gone off course a couple of times, we would have moved up to 8th place, but the 7th place team was way ahead of us.

When I said that I ran the 6 mile loop backwards on Monday, I didn't literally run backwards for 6 miles. I ran the 6 mile loop in the opposite direction that I normally do. Somebody who shall remain nameless asked me about it so I wanted to clarify it in case anybody else out there was confused and losing sleep over it.

5 Miles easy

I went to the park with intentions of doing my speedwork, but I saw Sean there and stopped to chat with him and he told me not to do any speedwork this week and just run easy to recover from the race this past weekend. He said there would be a group run up in Conroe this weekend so I'll be heading up there for a 24 miler this weekend. I wasn't feeling real motivated and my legs still felt a little strained so I headed home after 5 miles. My hamstring and calves felt great, but one of my quads was a little tender.

Monday 6 miles easy, Tuesday - off

I decided to go out for a 6 mile run at lunch on Monday since I had about 30 hours recovery since the last leg I ran in the Texas Independence relay. The first half mile I wondered why I was actually going for a run the day after running the relay where I ran about 27 miles total over a 16 hour period with 23 of them being marathon or sub-marathon paced. Surprisingly, my hamstring felt fine. I figured that it would probably be tender or tight after multiple fast runs since it seemed to feel like that the day after my last 8 mile tempo run. My calves definitely felt a little tighter and strained. I probably could have done a little more cooling down and stretching between legs of the race although I did do some after each leg.

After about 1/2 a mile, I started to loosen up and feel a little better. I decided to be wild and crazy today and I ran my 6 mile loop backwards today. I almost always run my looped runs in the same direction, but I figured going the opposite direction would keep the run fresh and exciting. After a couple miles I was actually feeling pretty good and felt like I could pick up the pace, but I held back some. I finished the 6+ miles in 45 minutes and averaged 7:25 - 7:30 pace.

I was swamped at work on Tuesday and at work from 7:00 am - 9:30 pm and didn't get a chance to run. It is probably just as well because my calves still felt kind of tight. Last year when I was having some pain in my achilles, it was preceeded by tight calves and not backing off when I needed to. They are definitely feeling better this morning and I'm planning on doing my planned speedwork this evening. Hopefully the weather will hold up and I can run my workout outside rather than on a treadmill.