Home Stretch - 6 weeks til TCM
Despite travel back East for work and several team meetings, I had a solid 46-mile week of training this past week. I even got to see Grease on Broadway on Wednesday with "Idol" Taylor Hicks, and help clean up Sheffield Island in Connecticut for charity on Thursday. How's that for a productive week? Tough job I have, right?
Most significantly in my training, I ran a simulated 5-mile race on the treadmill on Saturday and put up a 31:21, which would be a PR at this distance. What's more, it was a negative split of at least 25 seconds. This was tough, but felt great. It validated that I am making solid VO2 max progress, as this lines up with a marathon predictor of 3:04.
With jello-legs from Saturday's hard workout, I fought through 17 yesterday at an "easy" 7:51 average pace. Historically, I have struggled with long runs the day after hard 5-10k races, so I was glad to complete this workout despite my fatigue.
I am feeling reinvigorated. I am confident that if I can nail the next three weeks' workouts that I will be in position to set a PR in Minnesota.
The debate I am having right now is what to do about this weekend's long run. The Pfitz calendar calls for 17 miles with 14 at goal pace. I also have the option to run this local 1/2 marathon on Sunday.
Whad'ya'll think? Is it better to race a half mary to see if I can redeem myself from my recent meltdown? Or is it better to focus on marathon pace mileage on a solo training run?
2 comments:
That's not an easy question. I ran a 1/2 this past weekend instead of an easy 12. How is your body feeling? What does next week in your training plan look like? I'm following a version of Hal Higdon's plan and we ran 20 last weekend and 20 next weekend, but he said if you felt like it you could run a 1/2.
I would say racing a 1/2 would be equal to running 17!
I think Pftiz has you doing 17 miles the week after that, so maybe you can do this. Race the half mary then make the week after that's long run into a pace run.
Good luck!
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