I'm rather sure I won't be able to run more than ~32 miles this week. (I'm at 21.5 now, and I basicaly have one day left.) I've been just too busy. I'm going to treat this as a cutback week, and repeat week -2 next week.

The last 7-miler is in, and the 40-mile week is done. Next week (week 2): total of 43.5 miles. One long run of 9 miles, second longest is 8 miles. Tempo run: 2 miles warmup, 2 miles fast, 0.5 mile slow, 2 miles fast, 1.5 miles cooldown = 8 miles. Track day: 2 miles warmup, 5 x 600 m at 2:25 (1:36.5/lap) with 200 m recoveries (walk some, if necessary), and do one after the last interval, too, then 2 miles cooldown = 6.5 miles. The rest is two easy 6-milers.

I am on a trip to a conference in Iowa. Despite all of my expectation, I like this place (Iowa City).

I flew to the airport in Cedar Rapids (Iowa City doesn't have an airport), and I drove down here. The drive is only about 20 miles, which is how far you are from the airport if you live in central Atlanta (in the suburbs, you may be much farther). When I picked up my rental car, I saw a big green spot on the map of my GPS, and since my afternoon was free, I just picked a spot in the middle of the green, and I told the GPS to get me there. Half an hour later I was standing in front of an information table in the Lake Macbride State Park. I found nobody in the park, not even in the park office, and what was slightly more troubling, I found no water fountain or tap. I am always worried that I might be dehydrated after flying, but I decided to start my run anyway. I was planning to do only 6.25 miles.

I ran on the north sore of this beautiful lake. The area was a mix of wildreness and rural farmland. The lake and its direct vicinity was wild, with some natural (and restored) praire. That used to be the landscape all over Iowa. But you could see the farmlands and houses quite close to the trail. The trail was in great condition, just hilly enough that you can't call it totally flat. The temperature was 66 F (partly cloudy skies), and I enjoyed myself so much that I felt disappointed when I had to turn around at 3.2 miles into the run. I say "I had to", because I had no water, so I could not go any further without risking dehydration.

At one point, in a bay, I saw something on the surface of the water that looked like dirt. Ducks were swimming in it, and out of curiosity, I went down to the beach to check is out. I almost fell when I realized that I was ICE. Broken up, melting tables of ice. We haven't had freezing temperatures in Louisville for many weeks, so I was so totally surprised. Later, I saw another sign of the long and harsh Iowa winter: a patch of snow on the bottom of a ditch. At the end I realized that the mud on the trail was also probably from melting snow, and winter has just ended in this part of the country.

I returned to my car feeling great, and I already started to make plans on how to get out here on another day during the conference, and how to talk to other people into coming out here to run. I should have known that it was only the runner's high that made me think it would be possible... People sometimes envy me that I travel to many places over the World, but they don't realize that at the end, I spend most of my time in a windowless conference center.

I arrived to my hotel almost too early, and I went to bed quite early that evening. I slept 12 hours and woke up at 6:45. I had a big breakfast, then I laced up my shoes, and went for another run. This time I was in the city, and the night before, on the web page of this city, I found a bike path all the way to the campus of the University of Iowa (the place of the conference). I decided to do my run there. I was planning on running 8 miles anyway.

I was disappointed to realize that it was a concrete path. Asphalt is so much easier on the joints. The builders either meant to build a bike path, or they didn't know that runners don't like concrete. On the top of it, I always bring one of my old running shoes to travel, because I don't want to risk losing or ruining a newer shoe. The path was still very nice as it ran by a creek in a seemingly natural forest. Iowa City seems like a very bicycle friendly city. I got lost a few times, actually before I reached the woods, because the path had many branches and the signage was not good at all. A friendly guy, who was about to take his kid to school, helped me out. (He was on his driveway when I ran through his neighborhood, right after loosing the path.)

I finished the run with 8.38 miles, and I got back to my hotel just in time to have a shower and pack my stuff before I had to check out. I was moving to another hotel downtown, where I could not get a room for the first night. This is whene I'm now. Today I'm not running, I will just get exhausted from work. I'd been running for 11 days in a row, so my body may appriaciate the break and my mind may appreciate the work. :)

Tomorrow my flight leaves at 4:45, so I should be at the aiport at 3:45. The conference is over at noon, so I should have enough time to get a long run in in the state park again. I only have a 7-miler left on my plan for this week, but if I feel good and the time/weather cooperates, I migh do as much as 10 miles (and maybe take some credit for next week).

Good news 1: I found a really nice high school track that seems to be open to the public. It is black track surface, clear markings, far from big roads, etc. I ran there today.

Good news 2: Here is the statistics of my fast 800 meters: 3:13, 3:12, 3:11, 3:12, 3:13, 3:12. And no, I didn't have to gut it out. In fact it felt like the easiest track workout I've done in a long time. Like the track workouts back when I trained for the marathon.

If I average out the interval times (with decimals), I get 3:12.72, which correspond to the pace of a 20:04.5 on 5000 meters. I take this as a really good sign. I'll try to impove 3.5 sec / lap from here.

After the week's plan was made, one question clearly remained: what pace should I run my intervals, in particular the 800s in the first week. This is a somewhat dreadful question, because interval training was what frustrated me last fall to the point that I quit training for a while. In retrospect, the reason may have been (at least in part) that I tried to do my intervals too fast. I could gut them out when they were just a bit over my VO2 max, but as they got longer and faster, I physically couldn't keep up.

It is very hard to know what shape I'm in. My easy running seems to be faster than it has ever been, and I can crank out the tempo intervals without too much trouble. But I haven't run longer tempos or fast intervals in many months.

Pfitzinger's plan makes you run at your current 5K pace for the first two weeks (for interval training), then it switches to 2-3 secs/lap slower than your goal pace, then it accelerates gradually to goal pace. My goal is to run sub-20, that is clear. But to achieve it safely, ideally I should shoot for a time about 19:35. In road races, you *always* run slightly more than 5 kilometers, there are hills, wind, other runners, so the 25 seconds buffer is very good to have. The following table shows lap paces on a 400 meter track and the corresponding 5K times:

1:34 -> 19:35
1:35 -> 19:47.5
1:36 -> 20:00
1:37 -> 20:12.5
1:38 -> 20:25
1:39 -> 20:37.5
1:40 -> 20:50

As for my current condition, my pessimistic guess is ~20:50, my optimistic is ~20:12.5. The plan ideally improves you by 3-4 seconds/lap, so if I start with an assumption of 20:50, it is a stretch if I even can do 20:00 pace by the end. So let's get more optimistic, and assume 20:25 for now. This means that my current pace should be 1:38 / lap = 3:16 / 800 m. If it feels too easy, I might go down to 3:15, but not faster than that, because I have to do 6 of these! Then we'll see how it goes today. Even more important will be the workout two weeks from today: 5 x 1000 meters at 2-3 sec/lap slower than goal pace. If I can do 1:36.5 laps then without having to "gut them out", I should be fine, otherwise I will have to adjust.

I decided to cut Pfitzinger's mileage by brining down to first week to 40, and decreasing each week proportionally. Which basically means to divide weekly mileages by 1.15, and peak around 52 miles.

In light of this, and my travel to Iowa, this week will look like the following:

Mon: 6.25 miles easy. Tue: track (6x800 meters with 400 recoveries, 1 mile warmup, 1 mile cooldown, 6.25 miles total). Wed: 6.25 miles easy. Thu: 6.25 miles easy. Fri: 8 miles long. Sat: rest. Sun: 7 miles semilong. Total of 40 miles.

It has been hard to squeeze in the runs this week due to all the work I've done this week. Twice I ran at night. The second one was today: I did the tempo today, because I ended up doing the semilong on Wednesday. Despite all the troubles, it was a good run: two 1.5 mile tempo intervals ran in 10:22, 10:21 (paces 6:55, 6:54) with only 1/2 mile in between in 4:26 (8:52 pace). With the warmup and cooldown, I ran 7 miles form 8:50 to 9:45.

Tomorrow I will probably run in the evening (5 miles), and I'll crown the week with a 10-mile long run on Sunday. It will make it a 40-mile week, definitely the first of this volume since November 2009. This will conclude my base training. Then I will have to decide exactly what to do.

Yesterday (Monday) I didn't have time to run until 9pm, and I was too tired by then. So I skipped it, and now I will have to run on Saturday dawn. Also, tight schedule and lots of quality runs will make me run hard on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. Probably the tempo on Wednesday, the semilong on Friday, and the long run on Sunday will be the ideal schedule.

Today it was quite cold (38 F) when I ran my 10-mile long run, which concluded my 38-mile week. I mentioned last week that week -1 would be cutback. Guess what: it is not. I realized it was a typo in the book. In fact the week will be a 40-mile week in the following setup:

- three times: 5 easy miles;
- tempo with 2 miles warmup, 1.5 miles tempo pace (just below 7 min/miles), 0.5 mile recovery (not more than 5 minutes), 1.5 miles tempo pace, 1.5 miles cooldown;
- second longest run of 8 miles;
- long run of 10 miles.

I tried a new route today for my long run and I got lost, so I ran 10 miles instead of 9. Pace was 8:13 - this included some confused hesitation when I didn't know where I was. Legs felt very good. This concluded the week with 38 miles. Next week is another 38, all easy. This will be week -2 of base building. Week -1 is cutback, after that I'll be ready for a 5k plan. Though I might add some base building - depending on what I exectly want to do after that.

What is certain now that the plan for next week is quite simple: repeat this week without the tempo run. That is: 4 x 5 miles + 8 miles + 10 miles. 8 x 100 meters strides at the end of an easy run.

I had my first tempo run of the year today. 2 x 1.5 miles at tempo pace, with 1 mile recovery in between. The fast portions were 10:20 and 10:11 (6:53 and 6:47 pace). With warmup and cooldown I finished the workout with a total of 6.5 miles.

I haven't run fast since that disasterous night speed workout in November. I had this irrational fear that I am not able to run fast any more. Well, I haven't proven that invalid, but at least these 2 x 1.5 miles went fine. Of course, consciously I know that these fears are irrational, but it is a terrifying feeling that you try to run fast, but your body is just not willing to go any faster.

This week: 36.27 miles total, with 8 and 9 mile long runs.

Next week (week -3): 6 workouts as usual: 2 long runs, 1 LT intervals, and 3 easy runs. Easy runs are 4 1/3 miles for a total of 13 miles. The LT intervals run will be a tough one: 2 miles warmup, 1 1/2 miles LT pace, 1 mile recovery, 1 1/2 miles LT pace, 1 mile cooldown for a total of 7 miles. The long runs are 8 and 9 miles. This adds up to 37 miles.

Easy and long paces are between 7:57 to 8:27. Recovery, warmup and cooldown is anything to 9:30. LT pace is just under 7 min/mile.

After a crazy day, I wanted to run 8 miles after work, but I rounded it up to 9. I'm already at 23 miles this week.

I haven't even reached my first running goal yet (the sub-20 5K), and now, the BAA announced that they are changing qualifying standards for Boston. If you remember, my current goals are tied to the Boston qualifying times. Now, if you are a male under age 40, you have to run at least 3:10:00 to get in. I used my old method to type it in into McMillan's calculator (more exactly 3:09:00 to be safe - they eliminated the grace 59 seconds, too), and this is what I got:

5K: 19:23
10K: 40:16
HM: 1:29:37

These are intimidatingly fast times. Maybe it would be easier if I waited until I would be 40.

For now, I'm not changing my goals, so now I just set my standards to the 20 minute 5K time, which is 41:33 10K, 1:32:27 HM and 3:14:58 marathon.

I finished my 34-mile week with a 8-miler today - the first run this year in shorts and T-shirt (perfect 55 F). This has been my longest week since November 2009. That time it was for marathon training, which means the intesity was a lot lower (~9 min miles for easy and long runs). Also, my highest volume week ever was 45 miles, but that contained a 20-mile long run, so the week was only 25 miles before long run. Compare it to this week: 26 miles before long run.

Next week (week -4): 3x5 + 1x4 + 8 + 9 = 36 miles. I'll do a set of 8x100 strides at the end of the 4 miler.

Yesterday, I did manage to run home, in heavy snow, 6.8 miles after the long run on Sunday. I am fed up with the winter. Today it was 28 F.

Stupid me left the headlights on on my car last night, so I had to bum a ride from my wife this morning (no time for jump start). It looks like I'm running home. That means a 7-miler after yesterday's 8-miler. It will be rain or snow and 35 F. Am I tough or what?

I finished the week with 32.48 miles. Midweek was a bit of a struggle because of my cold. I spent a total 4 hours and 30 minutes running. I did strides, but they were not much fun, and I slightly messed them up, because I tried to run them too close to each other.

Next week, the plan is 3 x 5 miles + 4 miles (all easy) + 7 miles + 8 miles (long runs). It adds up to 34 miles. That will also be the longest week I will have done in a very long time. It will be week -5 of base training.

Another important first was the first time I ran 11 days in a row (at least 4 miles each). This is *way* longer than any streak I've done before. But I was fine. I don't think my body needs rest days, as long as I take it easy sometimes, and I don't try to do too much too soon.

I'm having a bad cold. Running anyway.

I finished my 30 mile week with no problems, despite being extremely busy. I had to take my rest day on Monday (because I drove all day - literally), then I ran every day, and I probably will run for 6 more days in a row, because I want to take my SRD on Sunday.

Next week (week -6) will be 32 miles as 4 x 4.25 + 7 + 8. I will also incorporate 8x100 meters strides at the end of one of the easy runs.