Boston Training, Week 3

Good week. Put in some strong miles. Might have overdone it on Saturday but hopefully I'll be fine. 40 total miles for the week.

Tuesday - 8 miles with a 3 mile tempo run. Ran this in the dark so it was hard to monitor pace during the tempo portion. Managed 7:36, 7:23, 7:36. Certainly nothing stellar but it was the first time I've trusted my piriformis enough to attempt a tempo run in a long time. When healthy, tempo pace is usually in the 7:00-7:10 range. But no hurry. Overall pace, 8:12.

Wednesday - 4 miles at recovery pace on the treadmill. 8:58 pace.

Thursday - 10 miles at 8:22 pace with 6 miles of hill work.

Saturday - 14 miles with over 9 miles of hill work. I completely overdid it on this run. But I thought that running 3 miles of hills then 8 miles on the bike path then 3 miles of hills wasn't really a strong enough "Boston-ish" type training run. So I added a nice hill in the middle of the workout. It ended up more like 3.1 miles hills, 1.5 flat, 1.6 hills, 1.6 flat, 1.6 hills, 1.5 flat, 3.1 hills. I ran pretty strong but I really felt it the rest of the day. 8:24 pace.

Sunday - 4 miles at easy, easy recovery pace. 9:40 pace. Truly running as slow as I could. I even slowed down to run with a neighbor for a 1/2 mile or so. Legs were sore but loosened up right away. Could feel it in my quads on the downhills.

Piriformis is feeling as good as it's felt in a long time. Still icing and stretching but I'm noticing that it doesn't hurt when I walk anymore and it doesn't hurt when I try to step over things, etc.
I'm feeling a little tweak in the lower abs where I had an injury in the past. I'm keeping an eye on it and so far it is not an issue, I just feel a little pinch every once in a while. Other than that, it is just the usual aches and pains from building mileage and intensity. Fingers crossed.