Week Recap (14 September 2008 - 20 September 2008) - 98 Miles

Another solid week, both in terms of quantity and quality. I was shooting for 100-105 this week and came a couple of miles short, which in the grand scheme of things is not a big deal. I feel like I can handle 5-10 more miles but with work and all it's getting hard to find the time to squeeze some more mileage in without at least sacrificing my social life some more.  Not that it's something I'm not really used to. Seeing how I only had two morning runs this week and Friday turned out to be only an 8 mile day it seems like there's room for more but that's easier said than done. I should be shooting to run doubles every day and I need to start running before work in order to do that. I can usually get a run in before lunch but you never know what can come up in the middle of the day. As far as workouts are concerned, I'm happy with how things are progressing. I haven't really run anything hard yet but I first want to get used to putting in some harder efforts while doing high mileage and running on tired legs. I'll wrap this up with one big announcement. I finally decided to run my first marathon and I'll be lining up for CIM on December 7th. I guess it's fairly obvious that I've been thinking about it for some time and I've been gearing my training to be more marathon specific so I figured I might as well commit myself to it.   

Saturday, September 20, 2008 [12M]

2x5000m - 17:11, 17:16

I was up around 10:30 this morning, had some breakfast and waited a couple of hours to be fully awake before heading over to Carlmont high school for a track workout. I'm starting to run some marathon specific workouts, which will include some longer intervals on marathon pace (I'm assuming about 5:40 pace for MP right now). I should be able to run more than a couple of 5Ks at that pace but I'm not yet used to running such long intervals on the track so I thought I could use a transition period. I started out a bit faster than planned on the first one, coming through the first lap in 80. I slowed down but not by much and I was comfortably running close to 5:30 pace the whole way. I split 5:28 for the first mile, was at 10:59 for mile 2 and 16:30 at mile 3. (Note that these were full mile splits and not 1600s, since the track is short and I'm running in lane 3, which is a couple of meters over 400m. I guess the 5Ks were about 30m long so they would have been 5-6 seconds faster, not that it makes much of a difference but I'm noting it down mostly for personal reference.) I was feeling fairly comfortable running 5:30 pace and decided to shoot for the same in the 2nd 5K. I took about 4 minutes of rest between the two intervals and continued pretty much where I had left off. I was slightly slower for the first mile, coming through in 5:32 then slacked off a bit on the second mile and came through in 11:08. My legs were feeling a bit tired but I mostly lost focus and  slowed down. I picked up the pace on the 3rd mile and split a 5:28 to come through in 16:36. The 2nd interval took some more effort than the first but I wasn't killing myself out there. I was running on some tired legs by the end, a combination I think of putting in 10K on the track and rounding up a week just shy off a 100 miles. I was tempted to add a couple of more miles for cool down but I was running fairly slow on the way back and I thought that I wouldn't get much out of a couple junk miles.

Friday, September 19, 2008 [8M]

Golden Gate Park. I had dinner plans in the city tonight and tried getting up in the morning for my long run of the day but I didn't manage to drag myself out of bed. I didn't have the time to put a run before lunch so I had to settle with running only once. I was hoping at least to leave work early but that didn't happen either and I left just in time to hit the Friday afternoon traffic on my way to the city. I was at Rachel's place at 6:15PM and headed out right away to Golden Gate park. Since I was running a bit late I kept this short and only ran once around the perimeter of the park. My legs were feeling somewhat tired so a short and easy was probably not a bad thing. 

Thursday PM, September 18, 2008 [11M]

Alameda - Jefferson. I got back home from work at 7:30PM and didn't waste much time getting out the door. Headed up Ralston as usual, continued on Alameda all the way to Jeffreson Ave and took El Camino back to my place. Not much going on tonight, just putting in the miles, averaging just under 6:50 pace. 

Thursday AM, September 18, 2008 [5M]

Foster City. 

Wednesday PM, September 17, 2008 [10M]

Hallmark. I left work early and was out again by 5PM, trying to squeeze in my run before heading to a concert. I started out at a faster pace than usual since I was a bit in a rush. I was feeling good, though, and didn't mind forcing the pace a bit. The climb up to Hallmark was very smooth and once I got there I was moving well on the rolling hills. The descend from Hallmark was fairly fast but not too much faster than usual. I wound up back in 62 minutes, which is 5-6 minutes faster than what I usually run this loop in. 

Wednesday AM, September 17, 2008 [5M]

Foster City. 

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 [15M]

8x2:30 fartlek. I ran over from work to San Carlos this afternoon and made it at Road Runner as Doug was heading out. I ran with him for less than a couple of miles, until we made it to the bay trail, and started my fartlek on the trail. My hard efforts were 2:30 long and I like I was moving fast although I didn't have any mile splits to get a more accurate sense of pace. I went by feel on the rest, starting each interval whenever I felt recovered. Perhaps I wasn't pushing the hard efforts as much as I should since I was recovering quickly and kept my rest somewhere between 1:00 - 1:15.  I ended up running 5.25 miles in just under 29 minutes so I averaged right around 5:30 pace, including the rest periods. It's hard to get a sense of how fast I was running on the hard efforts and even if I did, I wouldn't know how to translate times on a gravel trail to the equivalent on the road or track. I wasn't concerned about times today, though, all I wanted was to put in a good effort and I think I got what I wanted. Running over from work and having to run back afterwards also made sure I posted some solid mileage for the day. 

Monday, September 15, 2008 [14M]

Extended Foster City. Pretty much the usual loop with a 2 mile loop added around the park before Coyote point. Moving at a decent clip, just under 6:50 pace overall with the last 3 miles at 6:30.

Sunday, September 14, 2008 [18M]

Rancho San Antonio. In fairlty typical fashion I got started around 1PM. I psyched myself to head up Black Mountain trail, which I have avoided every other time I was in this park since it involves about 3000ft of climbing. I don't know why but today I felt like giving it a shot. I headed to Chamise trail first which led to Black Mountain trail. There were a couple of fairly steep climbs in the begining but it got more gradual towards the end. Black Mountain wasn't too bad at first either. It was a continuous climb for about 3 miles but fairly gradual, something along the lines of the other trails in the park. I made it to the end of the trail in 57 minutes and continued towards Monte Bello Preserve. I had another mile and a half to go and that was the most brutal part of the run. It took me 15 minutes to cover that last part, which means I was running 10 minute pace. Running is probably not the best term to use, the hill was so steep I could only sort of jog up. At least I made it up without stopping once and added a few minutes in Monte Bello before heading back. My legs were already feeling beat from the climbing and I wasn't very excited about the downhill part that was coming up. It only took me 8:30 to get back down to Black Mountain trail as I was pretty much running without control down the hill. I was still moving fairly fast on the more gradual descend back to Chamise and to the parking lot. By the end, though, my legs were spent and I was also feeling a bit dehydrated, which made the last couple of miles a bit rough. I wound up back at the car in 2:13:30 and I wasn't even sure if I could call this 18. I'm guessing it might be somewhere between 17.5 - 18, making this one of the slowest long runs I ever did. I doubt I'd be heading back up Black Mountain again, at least not all the way to Monte Bello.