Boston Training, Week 10

This was a scheduled recovery week but it turned out I needed a lot more recovery than I anticipated. That's what I get for racing too hard during a training run.

Tuesday - 3.2 miles, treadmill, recovery pace. This was going to be an off day but I felt like I needed to run so I just took it nice and slow.

Wednesday - 4.5 miles, treadmill, recovery pace. Still taking it slow. Piriformis sore, both sides.

Thursday - 5.1 miles 8:55 pace. This was a scheduled 8 mile hill workout but I just had nothing in the tank. I did manage to get 4 hills in before I totally bonked. A snow storm during mile 4 was the final factor in cutting it short.

Saturday - 14 miles at 8:37 pace. I didn't have much confidence going into this run after Thursday's lack of energy. It took a long time to get into any kind of rhythm, partly due to post-race fatigue and partly due to a strong wind blasting me in the face for 5 miles. When I finally turned around after mile 7, the wind was on my back and I finally did settle into a nice zone until around mile 10. At this point, I started to feel pretty tired. I started thinking about Ryan Hall and how he says to make the most of every run, even the bad one's. So I decided that this was a good opportunity to practice running while tired. I started to visualize the final 4 miles of the Boston course and as I ran up the bike path, I pretended that the cars flying by on my left were actually the Boston subway during that portion of the course. Additionally, I started focusing on form, and again summoned Ryan Hall, and practiced his seemingly effortless arm motion. All of this really helped and I was able to maintain pace through the rough patch. I finally bonked on the mile 13 hill but it was OK because I knew I was almost done. The piriformis held up much better than expected on this run so hopefully I can get it back under control next week. Between the wind conditions and the post-race fatigue, this was actually not too bad of a run.

Sunday - 5.2 miles at recovery pace. Just took it nice and easy and enjoyed the run.