Week 7: 75 miles.
Q1: Friday - 3mile, 1mile, 1mile with 2:20-2:30 rest in between. 16:11, 5:09, 5:06. Felt good to finally be able to get in a quality effort.
Week 8: 88 miles.
Q1: Tuesday - 4x1mile with 2:30 rest. (5:10, 5:08, 5:05, 5:01). Another step in the right direction.
Q2: Saturday - Gate River Run / US 15K championships - 49:52 (57th). Hot and humid day and most people ran 1-2 minutes slower than the year before so my +27s performance from 2014 wasn't "terrible", especially considering I feel like I don't handle humidity as well as most.
Week 9: 105 miles.
Q1: Tuesday - 6x0.5mi on treadmill at home. I just maxed out the speed to 12.0mph (5min/mi) and ran for 2:30 on, 1:30 off. Felt decent but didn't feel like it was as controlled as I wanted.
Q2: Saturday - 5000m race at CSU Pueblo. 15:52/4th. Felt like I was on pace through 6-7 miles and then just locked up and then fell apart mentally the last mile. Pretty discouraging since this race was at 47000 feet and the NCAA conversion chart I found only gave this performance about a 22-23s adjustment to sea level.
Week 10: 92 miles.
Q1: Wednesday - 3x1mi with 2min rest - 5:07, 5:02, 4:59. Another step in the right direction. Running close to 5min/pace at altitude is starting to feel comfortably hard, hopefully that means in a few days I can go down to sea level and do this almost 5 times in a row without a break.
Q2: Sunday - Shamrock Shuffle 8K - 24:44 / 38th. Officially a 8k PR by 1:34. (although I had a few splits in the 25:20-25:40 range during half-marathons last year). Still happy, although slightly daunting with the prospect of having to hold this pace for another 8 miles by the end of the year. (or mid January of 2016). Feeling optimistic though.
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This was a decent mini-block after having my Phoenix Half Marathon phase derailed by some sort of flu/cold/bug. Despite feeling good enough about 4-5 days after returning from Phoenix to get in a decent quality effort, I ran two pretty mediocre races in the following weeks and was pretty discourage heading into the last race of my "speed" mini-block. Luckily this past week I had some conversations with a couple of pretty experienced runners and everyone pretty much told me that even though I was no longer sick my body is still recovering and may need another 2-4 weeks before I feel 100% again. This basically confirmed a pattern that I have seen in my own training logs over the past few years (yet another plug for keeping a detailed training log). While it wasn't great news with the Shamrock Shuffle coming up in less than a week, at least it let me head into the race with tempered expectations and I was pleasantly surprised. At the end I ran a time that was about right in between what I wanted to run a few weeks ago and what I thought I was going to run a week ago, and given the fact that I finished pretty close behind some 66:00-66:30 half-marathon guys on a slightly cold/windy day I would consider this mini block a success.
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