MCM Countdown: 16 weeks to go....and Killing It!

It's been an awesome week of training, worthy of a recap:

MONDAY

Easy Day.  4 miles.  Just recovering from the 20 on Sunday.

TUESDAY

AM - Tempo Run (a.k.a. the Dolly Parton run).  Holding 9:00 (pace) to (mile) 5.  1-mile warmup and cool down, for a total of 7.  Thanks to cooler temps, I rocked this.  Ran each of the 5 miles just below 9:00 and kept my HR in the green zone (160s) the whole time.  Win.

PM - Hills - Part One.  Promised myself I'd do one hill repeat for every 10 calories I was over my targeted average daily net last week.  Thanks to PMS, too much peanut butter, and poor burn rate (< 1600 calories during the 20-miler instead of expected 2000), I owed myself 15 hill repeats this week.  Ouch.  A couple easy miles to the hill, then up as fast as I could go 5 times, with easy running down for recovery in between.  Easy running back home, for a total of 5 miles.

WEDNESDAY

Rest Day.  Massage.  Therapist gave me good feedback, saying that my muscles are in excellent condition and don't show the same kind of damage he usually sees with runners.  Apparently, all that foam rolling is making a difference!  He also said I have good form, that I lift my knees just enough and don't seem to heel-strike or over-pronate (which my shoe wear patterns also suggest).  Said he was also impressed with how well I care for my skin.  Too bad he wasn't hot & single! 

THURSDAY

17.76 Run to celebrate the 4th of July.  Drove down to Trinity Trails in Fort Worth and enjoyed running along the river.  Felt a little fatigued, as this put me over 50 miles in 5 days but had a goal of finishing in under 3 hours.  Thanks to a nice steady pace throughout and just a bit of a push at the end, I hit my goal.  Yay!

FRIDAY

Rest Day - walked just to keep things moving and to burn a few calories.  Don't want any more of those extra hill repeats next week!

SATURDAY

The Beast.  A 4-part workout, not counting walking to warmup/cool down:

A.  An adaptation of my old 1:1 run, where I would run for a song and walk for a song.  Today, I ran hard for one, easy for one, hard for one, then walked for one.  I was targeting yellow and blue zones (170s and 150s, respectively), and the up and down pattern of my HR reminded of a big M, so I deemed this one a Michigan run.

B.  Hills - Part Two.  Opted for a different hill, close to the other one but on a wider, more even road in a neighborhood, which meant less traffic.  10 repeats, with a little extra recovery running halfway through the session, just to bring my HR back down again.  Done.

C.  Sprints.  Also an M-shaped workout.  30-second sprint, 90 seconds of easy running, followed by another 30-second sprint, and 60 seconds of walking.  Repeated 10 times, for a total of 20 sprints.  Average sprint times not my fastest, but acceptable given the fact that I was running (not walking) between half of them, and doing 20 of them just after doing 10 hill repeats.  Pleasantly surprised to see best pace during a couple of them started with a 5:xx.  That's a new number for me.  :)

D.  More Michigan running, alternating hard, easy, hard, and walking for the length of a song.  Subbed one walk song for a hard one when going back up a monster hill...and my HR was still quite high, so that was the right call.  Finished strong.

All together, nearly 14 miles.  As I was cooling down, I realized I completed this 3.5-hour workout on just 4 hours sleep!

That brings me to 48 miles for the week--before a planned easy run on Sunday, which I may or may not still do, since 48 was my original target for the week.  Going back to last Sunday, I'm at 68 miles in the past 7 days...and my goal for marathon training peak is to cap at 60/week.  Oops!

I know that I need to be careful about over-training here, and yet, I am doing several things to aid my recovery:

- 2 days without running
- Chiropractor on Monday
- Massage on Wednesday
- Compression during/after long/hard runs
- Faithfully stretching and foam rolling after each run
- Ice baths after long/hard runs
- Supplementing with echinacea & vitamin C to boost my immune system
- Drinking green tea for anti-oxidants
- Taking advantage of the holiday weekend by napping to my heart's content!

Bottom line: Feeling good.  Feeling strong.  And feeling like another nap...