Despite real life obstacles, I had a decent week. I ran every day since Monday, though I only ran less than 6 miles on Tuesday (firefighter training all afternoon), and I only ran 6 miles on Thursday (but I swam 30 minutes, so that counts like 3 miles equivalent of cross training). Finished the week with 56 miles (59 counting cross training). I can attempt to get back on track now.

Best of all is the 5-mile tempo today. It was warm, and I ran barechested, and I was a bit hungover, but I still managed 6:29, 6:28, 6:29, 6:27, 6:30 miles, and it's not even completely flat (though not a lot of elevation change). I pushed the last mile (it was mostly uphill), but I still wasn't entirely spent. In fact I managed to run a 7:38, 7:16, 7:01 miles in cooldown. Altogether 6:58 average on 10 miles with warmup and cooldown, and I ran a sub-42 10K in it with some warmup and cooldown miles included!

It's surprising how fast I am with so much training missed. Makes me wonder what could have happened if only...

I was so busy last week that I lost another week of training. Just trying to play catch up again. This cycle is doomed.

I ran a good 10-miler on Monday at 7:15 average, and it didn't feel very hard. But I know this is just the by-product of not running. It will bite me back on race day.

I ran a 4 mile TT on the high school track close to our house. This was supposed to happen last week, but I had a horrible fallout last weekend, and for personal reasons (family life) I was unable to complete my Friday and Saturday key runs. So I ran my Saturday on Sunday, and I'll try to do the next week in 6 days.

The TT was not horrible, but it wasn't great either. 24:56 for 4 miles. It's 6:14/mile - more of a tempo pace than TT. In fact for a 1:25 marathon, the corresponding 4 miler should be sub 24 minutes. Well, of course, that assumes perfect preparation for a 4-miler. So maybe this is OK. I did set out to run 25 minutes, and I was able to do that. And I only spend the last half mile in the pain cave.

Even if I add this workout, my last week ended at 61 miles - quite short of the planned 72. I'll try to run 70 miles in the next 6 days - we'll see how I fare. Here is the plan:

Monday: 12 miles long run.
Tuesday: 11 miles somehow. Probably double is appropriate.
Wednesday: 15 miles long. Don't leave for the night (ough).
Thursday: 11 miles in double.
Friday: 10 miles somehow. Double would be best.
Saturday: Track session. Add to cooldown to round out the week. If all goes as planned, this day should also be 11 miles.

The track session: 5 x 1200 meters with 1:32.75/lap, 4:38.25/interval. Goes down to 1:33.28/lap, 4:39.84/repetition on the yard track.

So I've discovered that the high school track close to our house is almost certainly a 440 yard track. Not that it matters all that much after all. The difference in time is about 1/2 second per lap, which is probably unnoticeable at the interval lengths I run.

I'm not 100% sure, but I discovered staggered yellow lines in the lanes, and the innermost starts about 2 meters ahead from the finish line. What are they? Not finish lines for sure. So if they are start lines, they are start lines for what? Not 100 or 200, because they would start somewhere else on the track. The only possibility is 400.

So I will call my intervals 1000s here, even though they really are 1006 meters. Here are my splits:

3:40, 3:40, 3:39, 3:38, 3:36

These are decent intervals, and I love that they got faster! The last one was painful, but I wanted it to be. I could have run another 3:40 with little pain.

The only worry is the lack of miles in my training. These low weeks may bite me back on race day.

The busy schedule and the hot weather made me slack out again. I stopped running for more than a week. This seems like this is the recurring story of fall training.

Trying to get back to the fold, plus withdrawal kicked in hard yesterday, so I ran 6.6 miles. I felt like I ran nothing, it was so easy. So I'll try to pick up my training plan as I didn't stop. We will see if it works - probably won't.

Here is the rest of the plan.

Week -06, 09/07, 72 miles
Week -05, 09/14, 70 miles
Week -04, 09/21, 62 miles
Week -03, 09/28, 64 miles
Week -02, 10/05, 60 miles
Week -01, 10/12, 54 miles
Race week, 10/19, 44 miles

Tomorrow I'll try a 5 x 1000 track workout. Today I should run at least somewhat long, but it's hot, so I'll probably skip it. Maybe just 10 miles or so.

The cool weather is coming next week. No more excuses. So 10 miles today, track workout tomorrow, and then I try a 72 mile monster week. Probably not going to happen, but we can hope, right?