While Houston was a great breakthrough for me for the full marathon distance, I feel like the best thing for me for the next few months is to focus on the half-marathon distance. I ran a tempo workout in the middle of pretty heavy marathon training a month ago that really indicated strong half-marathon fitness, which makes me curious what I can do at what I consider to be my strongest distance right now. Also, a few of my training partners have plans of going for the sub-65 standard this summer, so it makes sense to try to take advantage of having company for workouts as much as possible. Finally, at 32 I am not getting any younger, so it's best to develop what "speed" I may have left at this point.
Without further ado, here is the first 6 weeks of my training following the Houston marathon. The plan was/is to build up for a few weeks and then really go after some PRs for races in the 8K-HM range throughout March (although I wouldn't be surprised if I run some 5k/10K personal bests en route) before devoting the last 10 weeks or so of the cycle to more threshold/10K type training.
Unfortunately, a cold/flu/bug of sorts was going around and I caught it about 7-10 days before my plans to destroy my half-marathon of 67:44 at Phoenix. The good news though is that I seem to be recovering fairly well and may be able to run some decent PRs at Gate River 15K next weekend and at the Shamrock Shuffle 8k two weeks after that.
Below is a quick summary of my last 6 weeks since the Houston marathon and some highlights:
Week 1: 61 miles (took first 3 days off). Only highlight this week was I got talked into doing a long run from downtown Colorado Springs to Monument, and what I thought was a 18 mile long run on nice trails turned into a 22 miler with the last 13-15 miles on some really muddy/icy trails. At least the pace was very manageable so it didn't take more than 1-2 days for me to recover and hit my first workout of the cycle.
Week 2: 120 miles.
Q1: Tuesday - 8x800s at the Petersen AFB track. (averaged 2:28s, with an average of 1 lap recovery in 2:17)
Q2: Saturday - 5 mile tempo on my treadmill at home in 26:16. I felt like I could have gone one more mile but it would have been too close to race effort. Nonetheless it was very encouraging since doing 6 mile tempos at 5:25s last year led to 67:44-68:12 half-marathon races.
Week 3: 125 miles
Q1: 5x"1 mile" equivalent loops at MVP. Averaged 5:02s with 2:30 rest. Solid effort but a little bummed that I basically ran 3-4s/mi faster than my tempo last week with 2:30 rest after every mile. It was a bit cold though so I was just happy to get the effort in.
Q2: 2 mile race at Nielsen (10:31), 15 minutes of easy running/recovery, 5x(2min on, 2 min off), 5 min easy, then 1mile hard. The average pace for the 2min pickups were 5:15, 5:25, 5:09, 5:01, 4:55 and then I ran a 5:00.8 mile at the end. A little bummed about the 2 mile race, but I was all by myself after going through the first half in 2:25 and just dozed off after hitting the hills a little after the first mile.
Week 4: 120 miles
Q1: 12x800s @ Cheyenne Mountain HS with Kenny Foster. Averaged 2:24.96 with 2:01 average rest. Definitely by far the best 800s workout of my life. (the prior fastest ones I can recall were 6x800 @ 2:23 and 9-10x800s @ 2:23 in college, but those were all done at sea level).
Q2: 6 mile tempo at MVP. (again, sea level equivalent miles). Averaged 5:12s/loop so about 5:22-5:24/mile.
Again, wanted to run faster but with the 15mph wind and occasionally stronger gusts I took whatever we could get.
Week 5: 100 miles
Q1: Was thinking of doing 4x1mile but I think it was already the beginning of the bug I caught. I cut the last 2 intervals short and did 800s instead. So overall I did 1-1-0.5-0.5 in 5:08, 5:05, 2:32, 2:30 with 2 min rest.
Q2: Ran the Snowman Stampede 5miler out in Littleton and finished 2nd in 26:47. A little bummed that I basically ran the same pace as my tempo last weekend but later in the day I was coughing nonstop and spitting out really thick mucus so I felt better about having an excuse for my performance earlier.
Week 6: 15 miles
Ran only 2 days this week. I took Monday/Tuesday off just to rest up even though I felt like I could run. I did a couple of short runs on Wednesday and felt alright. Since I couldn't really improve my fitness I took Thursday off and intended to run 3-4 miles on Friday, but opted for an extra hour of sleep before our flight instead.
On Saturday I woke up and felt absolutely awful, plus there were some issues that came up that made DNS an easy decision. We were sitting around later in the day and my wife found a 5K in town the next day so I thought a short hard effort might be a decent idea. The only thing that race confirmed was that I was still sick and not ready to run hard - I ran 16:01 and my garmin indicated the course was 100 meters short. At least I won a $30 Target gift card so I only lost $5 (paid $35 for race day registration).
So it obviously wasn't the greatest thing that could have happened, but at least I felt recovered enough a few days after the trip to put in a pretty solid workout and may still be able to put forth decent efforts in my next 2 races this month. I also officially signed up for the Garry Bjorklund half-marathon this week so I am feeling rejuvenated and ready to get back into the swing of things. Next stop: Jacksonville next week for the Gate River Run!
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