3/29/10

Monday’s Training – Am: 97 mins easy Pm: 58 mins easy progressive to steady

Mileage – 24 miles

I felt great this morning after taking yesterday evening off and getting a good night’s sleep. I met Martin at Trina’s loop and ran with him for his warm up and then headed off on the urban trails to see if they were celar. Almost immediately I was met by Ian Torrence, Andrew Middleton, Trent Briney and Nick Arciniaga heading the other way so I just ran with them for the next 7 miles, heading through town and out along the train tracks which to my surprise were all clear. It felt really good to be on this soft ground and I felt like I was just bouncing along (we weren’t going fast but when we got to any kind of hill I felt like I was still running on the flat). I got back up to Cheshire with Trent and then did a 2 mile loop and headed back to the car. I did some drills, strides and stretching before heading over to Martin’s house to get some stuff (I am storing a bunch of stuff there until our house is built) and then headed home for some breakfast. Julie had made up a big batch of steel cut oats the other night so I warmed some of that up with some almonds, cranberries and prunes and washed it down with some orange and mango juice. Needless to say that I passed out pretty quickly after finishing that off and woke up half an hour before I had a meeting with our realtors to sign the last of our forms for upgrades and additions to the house. We’ve not seen much movement at the plot but they said they would be starting the building this week so I’m happy that we’ll be seeing some progress soon.

The evening’s run was a good one. I felt really fresh so I started to pick the pace up a little once I got to the dirt road as I was heading from the gym. The road was completely dry but no cars had really been on it so it was a little too soft and very rutted so I was turning my ankle quite a bit. It did feel good to be off the road again though so I shouldn’t really complain. I got to the 5 mile mark at 30 mins, stopped for a pee and then headed off back to the gym. I made it back in 28 mins without any real increase in effort so that was a nice feeling. I went into the gym but I just wasn’t in the mood for the workout so I decided to do it tomorrow (we are pushing everything back a day this week as the wind is going to 30mph all day for the next couple of days) after my morning run. I got back and Julie was still out running so I managed to get the dinner all ready for when she got back. I had out some steaks in the fridge to marinate yesterday so I cooked those with some asparagus and yam’s.

I managed to get a little comfort about my performance at the weekend as I looked over Charlie Spedding's training on his run up to the Olympic marathon. I remembered that he had used races to get sharp and I wanted to compare my 10km to his performances to see how he was competing during his marathon build up. It turns out that he was running similar times but with less mileage during the week (he did his mileage quicker than I did). That made me feel a little better about not running a good time and I also talked to Trina Painter (one of out assistant coaches and former USA 20km record holder) and she said that before her best marathon, she had run slowly in a 10km. I wasn't the least bit worried about how slow I ran (because I felt so strong) but it was just comforting to know that others have had similar performances before good marathons.