Distance: 45 miles
Time: 6 hours 15 minutes
Comments: A solid, if unspectacular week. I simply wanted to get in a second week of quality miles and that mission was accomplished.
But the lack of speed work and hill work was clearly evident and the pacing of my workouts is lackluster as well. It's a lot of good miles, but not much else.
I also was feeling very tired toward the end of this week. My long run was a much better effort than I anticipated given how I felt on Friday and Saturday. It's clear a pull-pack is necessary at this point or I might be putting myself in danger of injury.
I went over to my storage shed last week and dug out my copy of Joe Henderson's Marathon Training which I bought five years ago when I last tried to train for a marathon.
First off, this is not the best book to pick up if you are looking to run your first marathon. It is essentially a day-by-day guide for a 100-day training regimine. Each week is a chapter and there are entries for each day that have information, tips and interviews to help you along.
So it works a lot better as a companion book with a more formal style training guide. The thing it has that is very helpful is a day-by-day training diary for you to fill out. This includes all the pertinant information you will need to record as you go through the training process.
And this is where the book helped me. Looking back, I didn't make it more than two weeks into the training before giving in. I had amassed a few months of running before getting going so it wasn't the usual start n' stop of a first timer. But my handful of entries are very telling.
I had my left knee issues pretty much from the start and I was trying to do way too much mileage from the get go. My day one target was 12 miles. Not bright. Which didn't matter much since I almost never got more than half of any workout I planned.
So it looks like that disaster paved the way for the progress I am making now. Not sure if that is a reccomendation for the book, but it sure is a plug for starting a training diary - or blog, as I have done this time.
Anyhow, taking a page from that book, this is my cutback week. I've piled on almost 90 miles in the past two weeks and that's a bit much. I'm shooting for a bit less although I will be trying to include track and hill workouts for intensity.
Injury update: I got through the week surprisingly well on the injury front. Mostly, it was the usual suspects. There is the continual tightness in certain areas like the side of the quads that just seems to be a part of my lot for now. I have also had a problem with the tendons on the top of my left foot. The new shoes seem to rub against it and it has become sore. And there is this bloody toe thing that needs to get solved, post haste, as well.