Distance: 38 miles
Time: 5 hours 32 minutes
Comments: Well, my goal was to get in the 30-35 mile range but my misjudging the distance of my long run put me over that by quite a bit.
While this is a substantial surge from the week prior, it is not all that out of line from my weekly total just prior to the Brazil trip. That said, I need to keep on top of this in the future if I want to avoid injury.
My plan was to use this week's effort as a baseline for the rest of the training. Pretty much set my 10 percent weekly increases by this effort. If you lower the mileage total in respect to the skipping my speed work on Wednesday that puts it in the 35 mile range which feels about right.
So I have reset my weekly mileage totals to reflect this in the training schedule and I plan to go back over it again this week for final tweaking.
The other reason I got such a substantial total this week is that I made sure to institute the 6-running-day week. This is something I intend to keep up for pretty much the rest of the training schedule as well. Rest days other than Monday will now be low mileage/pace days with cross training or something.
As I have gotten more focused on the training for the marathon, I have tweaked a few things concerning my training.
Over the past few months, I really have not been very regular with my stretching. Since my runs have been longer and my pace nothing really spectacular, I have simply been getting dressed and going out the door. With these more intense efforts, that's gotta change.
This week, I have been putting in a good 20 minutes stretching before every run and then giving myself a mile or so to warm up before hitting my stride. In addition, I have been doing 15 minutes of stretching after my runs as well.
The next thing I have become more focused on is nutrition. I have been trying to eat better for pretty much the last nine months but now, well, now it's a necessity. The bottom line is I gotta bulk up on the carbs.
I stumbled across this article in The New York Times from last July that llooks at the preparations distance runners are doing for the Bejing Olympics in 2008.
You really get a sense of the importance of diet after reading it. While many runners were getting the 5,000 plus calories they needed each day, they were doing it irregularly; a small breakfast, snacking throughout the day and then a huge evening meal.
An experiment where athletes were given three high-carbohydrate energy bars a day, in midmorning, midafternoon and after dinner were able to lose nearly 2 percent of their body fat and greatly improve their performance.
So I am starting to try and balance my meals a bit more and starting the three-bars-a-day diet. We'll see how it works.