What hectic day of training! I did my usual routine of driving to the expressway, 2 miles from the high school track where I do my training, parked my car, and jogged to the school as a warmup. It is more time efficient this way than driving all the way to the school. Plus I save gas and eliminate some air pollution.

During the jog I was thinking that it is great that I do this track workout on Thursday, instead of the usual Wednesday, so I'll probably avoid the fat people I wrote about last week. Well, I did. But instead of a nice empty track, I found the high school track team training there. I asked the coach politely if I could train there, but he asked me politely to use the outer lanes. That would be OK, except I can't run 2000 meters in the outer lanes. I contemplated it for a while, but I just saw no way of doing my workout. Also, the younguns were running pretty fast, so the coach was quite right that I would be problematic in the inner lane.

But my car was two miles away. I knew no open tracks nearby at all. I essentially gave up track training for the day, and I jogged back to the car. During which I thought I would just give myself the chance that the university track is open. I had given up on that track a long time ago, because it was almost always closed (locked) when I tried to use it. I even emailed somebody in the athletic department but I got no response. Anyway, I drove back to campus, parked the car in my usual lot, and jogged another half mile to the track.

And it was open. It is a very nice track. I took a sip of water and in 20 seconds, I was off to fast running. I was afraid that any second somebody shows up and sends me off, so I wasted no time. It was worrisome though that I already had almost 5 miles in my legs. I wasn't sure if I can run well after that crazy and long warmup.

Well, I could. 3 x 2000 meters with 800 m recoveries, and the fast splits were 7:22, 7:26, 7:24. It was never really painful (just discomfort). That is quite awesome. I seem to continue the tradition that the last track workout before a big race goes very well. I also recalled that in my sub-20 5K chasing days about 2 years ago, I ran 2 x 2000 meters in something like 7:50 or 7:55, and it was hard. So this is not bad at all. All intervals were at sub-6-minute mile pace.

The race is close. I'm optimistic about 1:25.

I'm not very good at regularly updating this blog. But I did keep up the running quite well.

On Sunday I ran 10 miles of trail up that mountain in Boulder. A great trail run, but with some walking and of course slow pace. 12:34/mile on average, but it went from 5600 ft elevation to 8000 ft and back, all on trails. It wasn't a very easy run.

On Monday I still ran in Boulder (in snowfall!). I got back to the hotel on time to watch the end the Boston marathon, but of course I turned off the TV (internet) well before the bombing.

No running on Tuesday, long run of 14 miles on Wednesday (hilly -- Cherokee Park -- and fast -- 7:28/m), easy Thursday. I didn't actually do a steady second longest run this week (I was supposed to do 10 miles of that).

On Saturday, I ran a tempo. I wussed out and I ran only 4 miles, though the pace was decent: 6:18 average. On one hand, this is probably my fastest tempo to date. On the other hand, how come I couldn't/didn't do 5 miles at least? I was supposed to run a 8-10K tune-up race. OK, no race (kids were my responsibility in the morning), but I could have done a 5 mile tempo. I felt so bad about this, that I ran the last 0.89 mile fast again, at 6:11 pace. So this was a sort of a silly workout. I should be smarter with my training.

I finished last week with 60 miles then. This week, I'm at 30 so far, not counting the slow 2.5 I ran with my daughter at the Girls on the run meeting. I plan to do 3 x 2000 meters in 7:30/interval today. I could do a second longest run of 9 miles on Friday (travel) or Saturday (conference). I must do a long run of 9 miles on Sunday, 7 at good pace on Monday, 6 easy on Tuesday, 5 easy on Wednesday, 4 easy on Thursday, rest on Friday, and race on Saturday.

Wednesday run was in Iroquois High School, the track. This is the second time that some morbidly obese parents watch some sweet little kids, who are running extremely slowly (it actually looks like a parody of running - and this is no joke). Last time I saw them there were only a few adults (one fat woman walking in the inner lane) and the kids seemed to have a structured workout, and they were even somewhat considerate of me. This time, the workout seemed to be over, and the adults just hung around for an hour or so, while the kids were playing around. Everyone was standing, walking, talking in the inner lane with almost zero consideration of me trying to run fast. Amazingly poor track etiquette.

Nevertheless, I had a somewhat decent workout. I got hot and dehydrated at the end, but I managed to run 4 x 1600 meters with acceptable splits: 5:58, 5:56, 6:01, 6:05. The last one was less than satisfactory, and I spent a good portion in the pain cave... I seriously thought about just giving up. But apparently this is still good enough to satisfy some kind of decent Pfitzinger paces.

Then I ran Thursday morning 4 miles only, because I was teaching and I had a plane to catch to Denver. I thought maybe I would finish the workout on the hotel treadmill in Boulder at 10 or 11 o'clock, when I was scheduled to arrive. Well, weather was bad in Atlanta, so we got delayed at the transfer, and only made it to Boulder at 2:00am. So no more running on Thursday.

We hiked with a group in the Rocky Mountain National Park on Friday almost all day. We climbed a 3000 meter mountain. It was fantastic. I thought that would be the exercise of the day, but then, in the afternoon, reading around about Boulder, I couldn't resist, and I went for a run. My first run over 1600 meters of elevation. It is definitely harder than sea level, but I think I already felt partially acclimated, because it wasn't all that hard.

Today (Saturday), we have had a long lunch break at the conference, so I went out to do my planned tempo and to finish the 64-mile week with an 8-miler. I decided to run 2 easy, 4 hard, 2 easy. Because of the elevation and the hilliness, times are essentially meaningless, so I just jumped into my 2-1 breathing pattern, and pushed my pace as far as I could with this pattern. I decided to stay out of the pain cave this time. If I really honestly just want the training effect, it is not necessary to enter there. I finished, and my splits for the fast portion are: 6:57, 7:39 (steep climb), 6:27, 6:07. The average was 6:47.8, which is meaningless, but it still feels good that I did this pace a mile high and with the hills (and no pain cave). I hope it did help my lactate threshold.

Tomorrow I'm not going to RMNP, as I originally intended. I will probably just climb/run one of the beautiful mountains around Boulder.

Tuesday:

Run 1: 6.6 miles, 52:07, old Mizuno.
Run 2: 4 miles, 32:19, old Mizuno.

Monday runs were done in old Asics.

Today I ran 16 miles at 7:28/mile. It looks bad on the statistics to have a zero mile week, then 37.5, then 35.5, but there is little evidence of any loss of fitness or endurance. I'll see how I'm with LT this weekend. To get back on schedule I'll try to squeeze in two quality workouts this week.

Week -3: total of 64 miles.

Sunday: 16 miles (done).

Monday, Tuesday: 2 x 5 miles or 10 miles recovery pace (Seriously!! I'll need it!)

Wednesday: 4 x 1600 meters at 1 sec/lap slower than 8K-10K goal pace. Let's discuss this. Last week I entered 1:25 HM into McMillan to compute my 8K goal pace, and the paces were too easy. If I had entered 1:23, it would have given me 3:41/km pace, or 88.4/lap. If I add 2 seconds, I get the 90 sec/lap that I was trying to get inside of. So it looks like a good method to try again. So this time I'll try to aim for 89.4/lap, or 5:58/ interval. Essentially run all 4 in less than 6 minutes. Probably 800 meter recoveries.

Thursday: Travel, but try to get 9 miles anyway.

Friday: Hike or 5-mile tempo (total of 9-10 miles)

Saturday: if Friday is hike, or Thursday is bust, do 9-10 easy to get to 64.

Sunday: Hike, but try to run 9-10 or more miles in the Rockies. Pace is irrelevant. This should be part of the following week though.

Nice intervals today. Warmup, cooldown 2.2 miles, and 5 x 1200 meters with 600 recoveries. Fast splits were 4:27, 4:25, 4:25, 4:27, 4:27. It seems like I still have it. I was in the pain cave for the last 400 meters of the last split only. That's quite normal.

Pfitzinger only wants me to run these in 4:38, but that seems super slow. Or if I really run them in 4:27, that means 89 second laps, so my 8-10K pace should be 87 seconds, which is 36:15 for 10K. I'm almost positive that I couldn't do that.

As you'all may have expected, I didn't jump back to 70 miles. I did fine for the first half of the week (37 miles in 3 days), but then more work, more URDs, and that was it for the week. 6 days of no running, and started again this Tuesday with only 4 miles (that was all I had time for, but I had to go out, because I started to have withdrawal symptoms - I'm not kidding). Wednesday I finally had an 11 miler. I left my Garmin at home, so I didn't know my pace until the end. It turned out to be 7:10/mile. I didn't mean to run so fast, but I guess I was hungry for exercise. Then 11 easy yesterday, and I'm about to have some intervals today.

My training is out whack, and I'll have two travel weekends ahead before my race, so I'm not sure how the rest will go.