Sunday, July 6, 2008

Weekly Summary

First official week of my training program for California International Marathon; December 7th - 23 weeks of training - trying to keep to a steady 350+ miles/month

Basic schedule is tempos Tuesday, strides Wednesday, 1200 or 400s Friday and long Sunday. Everything else is easy (8+ min/mile) with doubles M/W/F. 3 out of 4 weeks (or 4 out of 5 some months) are 80-90 with the other week being a cutback down around 55-60. Long runs (20+) most weeks.

This was my first post marathon 80+ week and it ended up at 86 and change. It was something of a shock to the system and today's 20 seemed like a long way. Friday's 5x1200m at 4:29 kicked my butt - the first 4 went OK but #5 was painful and it was a struggle to do 4:39 (with all the extra 10 seconds in the last lap). For Wednesday's strides I ran at the track and at the end tried a "fast" lap for fun - managed a 76 second 400m. That seemed real fast to me, but the online race calculators say I should be able to run a 65s (4:21/mile pace) which seems ridiculous.

Both achilles are sore, so I'm going to stay off the hills for a while and they should sort themselves out with some easy stretching at night. Biggest injury problem is a groin issue which I think is a sports hernia. This has been niggling me for about 6 months now, but seems to be getting worse - At first I thought it was just a muscle pull but it's not going away. I haven't done much research, but what I have done doesn't look good - always seems to end with surgery and time off running..... We'll see how that goes, hopefully I can nurse it thru CIM and maybe also Boston next April. Between that and the achilles it's taking me a couple miles to warmup and get the aches and pains worked out - I am feeling old.

Oh well, just 22 weeks (or 1,754 miles) to go........

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