Monday, July 13, 2009

Chicago - Week 2 Training

Week 2 is a wrap. Came in just under 84 miles and I am feeling good despite the second week of a big distance jump. Let's see how the jump to 90+ goes this week.

I am thinking that the addition of a hot tub in our back yard is helping. We got this a couple weeks back and I've been soaking 4-5 times/week. I was initially a little worried about this as I have heard a lot of stories about hot tubs making it harder to recover from long/hard runs - and that ice baths are much better. Not sure what the physiology is behind all that but it seems to be the general consensus among runner types. However, the family was not so keen on an ice tub in the back yard so I decided to risk it. And fortunately I've found that it is helping (at least so far!), so I will keep using it.

Like most training weeks I had three fun workouts this week, and a bunch of easy runs. Tempo on Tuesday was good, when I did 6 miles at 6:21 pace. This was the best tempo I've had, and I was happy to see it after the previous week's sloggy 5 mile effort. Thursday was my first trip back to the track, as documented in the previous post. And yesterday I did a 21 miler with a bunch of mid sized climbs. It was 9 runs overall and no days off.

This week is similar, but I will get another 7-10 miles in there somewhere, and will go a little longer in the tempo and do a few more reps at the track.

Then I get to cut back the mileage for a week (down to the mid 50's), with a day off and then a half marathon on July 26th.

1 comment:

Peter Lubbers said...

How could they NOT want an ice tub instead?

Good to hear training is going well. I am back in action after a little break in June as well. Feels good to ramp it up again.