Week 10, 2012

Perfect week; injury gone!

That was a really good week. The injury that was bothering me for so long finally went away for good. Although now that I think about it maybe it's not surprising it took its time -- I ran 320 km in February, making it my 3rd best month ever(!). And February is not famous for it's extensive length ;). In other words: after the injury I was getting up to speed with my running rather fast ;)

But as I said finally all the pain went away and on Tuesday for the first time in a long time I was able to do intervals with AV'23 without holding back -- felt great. We did 12 intervals alternating between 400m and 800m with ~70sec of break in between. I averaged 3:55 min/km over all intervals which I'm rather happy with.

In general this week I did a pattern that I'll try to reproduce from now on, whenever possible: 3 days of trainings (Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday) but every day two trainings. Tuesday: easy run in the morning, intervals in the evening. Thursday: easy run in the morning and a progressive run (somewhat faster pace) in the evening. Finally Sunday a long run in the afternoon and then around half of the distance it in the evening: both at slow pace.

On Thursday I was in Paris so I did both of my runs at the residence of the Cite University, with the evening run with a total of 16K and an average pace of 5:00 min/km (on a loop with a substantial descent followed by equally serious ascent). On Sunday I did 26K and added another 14K in the evening just for good measure ;) totaling 40K that day. Funny thing is that in the evening I wanted to take it real easy but was running by my HR and that stubbornly kept low, so I ended up with a 5:15 min/km pace, which is somewhat faster than most of my easy runs. But I have to say that the 26K took its toll. After the ran I felt very tired, went to a theater and had to seriously fight not to fall asleep during the performance. So it was a real exercise of strong will to get my ass for the evening run ;). But once I did it, of course it felt great.

Next week I'll take it somewhat more easy as I want to conclude with a half-marathon on Sunday. Goals? My goal for the marathon is hopefully 3:12, so a half-marathon McMillan-equivalent for that would be 1:31. So I guess that's what I'll try to run, although if things go well I'll probably try to make a stab at my PB (1:29:35). Plan for the week: a total of around 75K with usual two trainings on Tuesday but then only one on Thursday and a pre race warm-up on Saturday.

Oh, and next week I hope to have some cool changes in the presentation of my trainings (and in what will one day become the new, better Endomondo ;). In fact I was hoping to have them now, but didn't quite make it. I think they're pretty cool so cannot wait to share them with my small, but devoted group of readers :D

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