Week Recap (1 May 2011 - 7 May 2011) - 40 Miles

Sunday: 15M
Started the week off with a nice 15 miler. Headed out from home and to the Presidio up Arguello Blvd. Picked up the bay trail towards Lincoln Blvd, then continued along the Coastal trail and finally headed home through Golden Gate Park. Averaged right around 7:00 pace which is pretty decent for this loop since it includes a fair amount of rolling hills and some slow parts on the trails along the coast. Felt pretty good too, probably the best I've felt in a long run in quite a while.

Monday: 8M
Pretty slow run at golden gate park.

Tuesday: 0M
Day off.

Wednesday: 10M
Hill repeats, 2x up Hayes St, 4x back and forth on Divisadero. I decided to run some hill repeats, partly in preparation for Bay to Breakers. I started from home and made my way to the botton of Hayes St hill after a couple of miles. The B2B course includes a rather brutal climb up to the top of Hayes St by Alamo Square. This workout brought back memories of workouts we used to run up Summit Ave in Boston and it was surprising how similar Hayes St and the long side of Summit ave are. They are both close to half a mile with similar elevation gain. Hayes St starts out a bit more gradual though and is a lot steeper near the top, making it pretty hard to top well. I started my workout as soon as I crossed Laguna St and started working the hill well. I slowed down as I was getting closer to the top, as expected, but I managed to put in a good effort. My legs we already feeling it though and I wasn't looking forward to heading back down and running another repeat. Even the downhill part was rather brutal and I was running on tired legs on the second one, making it noticeably slower. I was feeling pretty tired for the rest of the workout and I didn't feel like I was running very fast but it was a somewhat decent effort. I was considering adding a couple more short repeats but opted for a longer cool-down instead. I even stopped by Kezar and ran some barefoot strides before heading back home.

Thursday - Friday: 0M

Saturday: 7M
10x400 with 200m rest: 75, 76, 73, 73, 73, 70, 69, 70, 69, 67. Some speedwork to close out the week. I wasn't expecting a very challenging workout since I was taking 200m of rest between intervals and my head wasn't entirely in it when I started. I came through in 36 on the first one but relaxed too much on the second half. The second one didn't go much better and I was a bit surprised to see a 38 turning to a 39 at the 200. At that point I starting getting worried that it was going to be a rough day and even thought about cutting the workout short if the next interval continued on the same trend. Fortunately I managed to get into a better rhythm from then on and pulled off a decent workout. The last half, especially, felt pretty good and it was good to see that I still have some kind of speed in my legs.