Plan for week -4:

Total: 47 miles.
Long runs: 8 and 9 miles.
Time trial: 3200 m warmup, 10000 m time trial, 3200 m cooldown. Total of ~10 miles.
Track: 3200 m warmup, 4 x 600 m at goal pace (faster than 2:24, but no faster than 2:19 - these correspond to 1:36, 1:33/lap respectively). Run 200 m recoveries no faster than 1/2 of the time of the interval. 3400 m cooldown. Total of 6 miles.
Two easy runs of 7 miles each.

We misunderstood each other with my running partner (for a day), and in fact he will be in town next week. Nevertheless, I ran 7 miles this morning by myself, running 6 laps on the Seneca Park running trail. What can I say - it was rather boring this way. I didn't even bring my MP3 player. Also, I ran 10 miles yesterday evening, so this makes it 17 miles in little more than 12 hours. My legs felt it! But now I'm at 39 miles for the week, and no injuries. My muscle soreness after the weekend is almost completely gone. Looking forward to the 11-miler on Sunday.

It's now official: I'm running Johnny's 5K Memorial Run on June 4th.

Today I got rained on again. I'm getting fucking tired of this. 3 out of 4 this week so far. And we're not talking about drizzle. I'm soaked wet every single time.

On Tuesday I ran 2x2000 m, and it was hard. The first one was fine (7:52), but after 800 m recovery, the second one was really hard. The last two laps were test of my guts (literally), but I finished it in 7:53. This is not ideal, but I guess it was somewhat expected. The weather has warmed up, I basically skipped a week, and the workouts are getting ever harder. If I could do all of them with no trouble, I would have a guaranteed sub-20. When in reality, I know that the best case scenario is that I barely break it.

Yesterday I ran 7 miles in the rain, and so far, out of the three runs of this week, two were in rain. I'm a bit fed up (and with all the flooding that comes with it). Tomorrow I'll run early in the morning in Seneca Park with an on-line pal. Cool. Today I'll do my 10-miler.

Finished the week with 47 miles with a 10-miler in Spruce Pine, NC. I ran the 10-miler on a very hilly course, but I managed to accomplish an 8:30 min/mile pace by accelerating toward the end of the run.

Next week I will combine week -6 and week -5 of the plan, because I have to save a week to run a race on June 4th. So I will run the lower mileage of week -6, but I will do the better quality work of week -5. The week will look like the following:

Long runs: 11 + 10 miles.
Track workout: 3200 warmup, 2000 fast (7:52.5, 1:34.5/lap), 800 recovery, 2000 fast, 4800 cooldown (might want to consider this on the street). Sum of about 8 miles.
Easy runs: 7 miles each (of 3).
Total: 50 miles.

Today I did 5x1000 meters. Essentially the same workout as two weeks ago, except the intervals were supposed to be faster: 3:56. My splits were perfect: 3:54, 3:53, 3:55, 3:55, 3:55. The weather was quite nice, 62 F and sunny, although just slightly warmer than ideal, but it didn't seem to inluence my prformance too much. It was a bit harder than 2 weeks ago, but not terrible. I ran my cooldown (3000 meters) at 8:01 min/mile pace (with no rest between the last interval and the cooldown!), which shows that I was not completely exhausted.

It was fun to watch some high school kids training just as I finished my run. They were running 600s quite a bit faster than I could (like in ~2:00). I mean I could certainly run 600 meters in 2 minutes, but not many of them.

I plan to run 7 miles tomorrow morning, then we travel to NC (Easter camp), where I will do a 10-miler probably Sunday early morning.

Unofficial log: home, 9:05pm, 7 miles, 56:30, Saucony, 49 F.

Unofficial log: Tuesday, 8.3 miles from work to home. Sunny, 84 F, Saucony.

The week has been succesfully completed with ~44 miles. I feel a little beat up, especially today, which was my easiest (shortest, slowest) run of the week after my rest day. It is totally counterintuitive that I should feel beat up after a run like this, but in fact this seems fairly typical for me. The easy run after the rest day is in fact the hardest. But I'm more or less OK. Some mild PF, shin splints, knee issues, but nothing out of ordinary. (Am I ruining my body? Possibly. I don't care. I run while I'm somewhat young and somewhat fast. I won't have much use of healthy joints at 80 when I'm dying of cancer, or something like that.)

Next week is back to 47 miles. That is week -7 of the plan. In essence it is a repetition of week -9 with slightly faster intervals. It looks like the following:

Long runs: 8 and 10 miles.
Track: 3200 m warm-up, 5 x 1000 m fast at 3:56 (1:34.5/lap) with 400 m recoveries (make sure to take at least 1:58), then 3000 m cool-down. Altogether 8 miles.
Easy runs: 3 times 7 miles.

We'll see how the intervals will go with the possibility of higher temperatures. For Tuesday, the high temperature is expected to be 82 F. That would be *very* different from the 54 two weeks ago. Also, last November, I botched a workout easier than this, and it started a 6-week hiatus... so I'm somewhat worried.

I was going to do the Throo the Zoo 5k, but it looks like that plan is out of the window now. My daughter was invited to play (piano) in the School of Music's honors recital, and that is about a thousand times more important to me than a stupid race.

Unofficial log: Wed, 6 miles, at work, 64 F sunny, Saucony.

The monster 47-mile week is over today (after only 6 days), so I'll rest tomorrow. Today's 10-miler was quite an advanture. I started fairly tired, because yesterday I ran in the evening, and today I ran in the morning. Also, this was my 7th day in a row, and the weather warmed up. Plus it started to rain, the the rain became torrential, then thunder and lightning came, and I was still OK, until the hail came down... Anyway, at least the hailstones were not huge.

Next week is cutback, and God, I need it. Back to 43.5 miles. Long runs of 9 and 8 miles, 4 miles tempo pace (total of 8 miles that day), and easy runs of 6 + 6 + 6.5 miles.

I ran perfect 1000 m intervals today. The splits are 3:58, 3:58, 3:59, 3:56, 3:56. It was not too hard, I could have run at least one more. I didn't have to "gut it out". It was fun, too, perfect weather, and I ran with a friend (well, not the fast running, just the rest).

9.3 miles on Sunday, for a total of ~44 miles this week. This is about as much as I did in a week. (Theoretically I did 45 once, but that was not measured by GPS, so it was probably slightly overestimated.) Temperature was 65 F, sunny, and I ran in my new Saucony. (I'm logging it here, so that I will have the info when I'll have access to my real log.)

Next week: 47 miles. 10 + 8 in long runs. Track workout: 3200 m warm-up, 5 x 1000 m fast at 3:59 (1:35.5/lap) with 400 m recoveries (make sure to take at least 2 minutes), then 3000 m cool-down. Altogether 8 miles. Plus 3 times 7 miles easy runs. I think I'm going to have to start bringing water on my easy runs. (Especially because the weather warmed up considerably.)

I've just looked at my statistics and I see that I ran 173 miles in March. This is the largest volume I've ever done in a month. It also helps that March has 31 days. I ran on 25 out of those.