Well I just finished my 21k long run a few hours ago and I can now sit back and enjoy the next day off, unless I plan on cycling tomorrow. As of right now, I'm going to leave the horses in the stable tomorrow.
This was my first full week of marathon training and it felt awesome!! That extended period of recovery after the Bluenose left me feeling refreshed and anxious to get running again.
This week I cycled to work on Monday, Wednesday and Friday for a total of 136km. I'm going to try to cycle to work on the days that I don't run, which will provide a good low-impact form of cross training to work the muscles that the running doesn't. Plus, I really enjoy cycling to work. It takes me almost the same time as it normally would when I ride the bus and I get to work feeling more awake and alive before my job beats me down to a mindless pulp for the day but thats another blog. lol
Tuesday and Thursdays runs were 12k and 11k, respectively, with the speedwork on the track on Thursday. Friday was a short recovery run followed by my long run of 21k today.
I'm really pleased that of all of my runs this week, today was the only day I ran with a traditional running shoe on. For every other run I either went with my Vibram Five Finger Bikilas or my New Balance Minimus trail runners. Todays run in the Kinveras felt like I was running on clouds compared to the other runs. Not good but I'm not ready to run 21k with the minimalist shoes just yet. Yet being the operative word there. I will continue to run every run except for my long Sunday run in the minimalist shoes.
I was looking forward to todays long run all week and I found that this morning I was really restless. It was like the horses were just itching to get out for a long run. The plan today was to break the 21k into 3 separate paces, getting faster for each section. the first 7k at 6:20 per km. the next 7k at 6:00 per km and the last 7k at 5:40 per km (my marathon pace). This works out to a predicted time of 2:06 for the whole thing. I finished the run in 2:05:10, very close to what I predicted. For the humidity today, i was very happy with that time. The last 2k I could feel the lactic acid building up in my legs quite a bit, especially on the hills. I got home feeling hot, tired and great. My smartphone's music app was pissing me off somewhat during this run. It was skipping on a lot of my favorite running songs, but I managed to ignore this and keep plodding along. Last year, I didn't run this distance until some time in August or early September so I'm way ahead of my training for the Valley Harvest, PEI or Moncton marathon this fall (yes, I know I haven't totally made my mind up yet and I likely won't until October lol).
Next week's distance is 55k, a 10% increase in distance. The week after that gets interesting, we're going to Alberta for our vacation and I have to find a way to keep the running going to the tune of 60k, 66k and 70k weeks. Running in Canmore should be interesting as well, being over 4000 ft in elevation, means that I'll be getting less oxygen than what I'm used to running here in Sackville (300ft in elevation). Obviously, that'll mean a slower pace for sure. Can't wait.
Great, now its time to kick the feet up and enjoy a well earned rest.
Onward and upward!
No comments:
Post a Comment