The 70-mile week is successfully finished! It had a 12-mile run with a 7-mile LT portion on Friday, and a 22-miler on Sunday. Done both. Unfortunately the LT run was on the treadmill, so it's less valuable, but I ran 6:18 pace (as opposed to 6:20), and it was just too hot outside. Then, today, 22 miles at 7:43 pace at ~75 F, sunny. Both were hard, but not unreasonably so. My hip was bothering me at the end of the long run. I hope it will hold up for my race.

Some "records" this week: largest week ever (a tie, I think); second longest run ever (after my marathon); longest LT run ever, strongest LT run ever, PR on 20 miles, 21 miles, 22 miles. In fact since I finished the 22 miles in 2:50, I could walk the last 4.2 of a marathon and still PR! I shouldn't get complacent though: at 22 miles I was ready to stop.

Recovery week goes well so far, though I had too little sleep almost every night, except for the last one. I did my first VO2 max workout, 6 x half-mile with quarter-mile recoveries, with splits of 2:52, 2:56, 2:53, 2:56, 2:55. This was 5K pace, quite well executed. GA run with strides today dipped under 7:30/mile on average.

I changed to weeks starting on Monday by inserting an extra rest day on Labor Day after Sunday. I wanted to change due to real life schedules, and this thing worked well, because we had a long bike ride with the family on Monday, and this is recovery week anyway. I will have to tweak the last week or two to accommodate for the race that is one day early now.

Here is how the rest of training cycle looks like.
Week -7: 9/14 (70 miles)
Week -6: 9/21 (65-69 miles, race on 9/26)

Week -5: 9/28 (70 miles)

Week -4: 10/5 (60-64 miles, race on 10/10)

Week -3: 10/12 (68 miles)

Week -2: 10/19 (55-57 miles, race 10/24)

Week -1: 10/26 (43 miles)

Race week: 11/2 (28 miles)

The races won't necessarily happen, especially the one on 9/26, because I'll be travelling. No races nearby anyway. So that will probably be a Saturday morning time trial in Ohio. On 10/10 there is an ideal 10K in Louisville (Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 10K), so that is a likely option. On 10/25 I'll be probably running the Urban Bourbon half marathon (racing the last 10K only), so no race on 10/24 in that case.

Happy to report that I've had decent training recently: no skipped or blown runs, despite some really awfully hot weather and bad air quality. I was forced on a treadmill 3 times this week (must be a record for me). I had one decent run outside, which was my 13 miler, for which I set out at 9:30pm (shirtless, too).

My Saturday run (4 easy + 12 marathon paced on TM) was my first halfway decent marathon paced run, though I still had to interrupt it 3 times: twice for water, and once to tie my shoe. Also, I had a bathroom break (5 minutes or so) between the 4 easy at the beginning and the GMP portion. But it is still a lot better than any other recent GMP run of mine. GMP pace was set to 9 mph on the treadmill which is 6:40/mile, and in fact I set the last mile to 9.1 (6:36/mile).

All in all, I finished the week with 67 miles and this is after 68, 65 mile weeks, as planned. Probably the most miles I've ever run in three weeks. I hope it will pay off on race day.