Ugh. So first of all I decided to do the 5k instead of the 8k because everybody I was with was doing the 5k and I didn't want to wait the extra 1.5 hours for the 8k when I have a med school exam to be studying for. I guess everyone has bad days, and worse days, and some even worse, and then one day you die. This I will just file away as one of my worst races ever. I don't have much of a reason for running so slowly. I went out in 5:22 and didn't feel all that bad. Then mile 2 was 6:08???!? That has to be like 10 mile race pace for me. I don't know what happened. Could the course have been long? And the third mile was only slightly faster and I really had nothing to kick it in with. I could list a thousand excuses, but I honestly don't know what went wrong in such a big way as to make me run nearly 30 seconds slower than what I did last week on a hilly course only 6 days after my marathon. I am gonna ask jamie what I should do. He has much more experience than I do with this stuff. I might take 2 or even 3 weeks off and cross train with swimming/cycling/elliptical. Last december I spent 3-4 weeks at around 25-35 miles per week because I just didn't ever feel like getting out the door for runs. Then in the spring I ran huge PR's. But I don't know if that is why. After my break, I did a spinning class, kept my mileage at anywhere from 50-65 miles per week and did workouts every week. If any of you have had similar experiences or advice please tell me. I am currently thinking I won't run the downhill mile next weekend because if I don't break 5 I will be absolutely crushed. And right now I don't have much speed or confidence.
AM: 5.15 Had a lengthy conversation with jamie about training philosophy. The only interesting thing that came out of it was that he thinks that for 5k to 10k training, one run each day should be a good bit longer than the race distance. In college he did only 3 miles in the mornings and did his main run in the afternoons much longer (making 80-100mpw). The rest of the conversation just made me feel more confident that I am recovering daily from runs and workouts which is what is really important. And recovering from the marathon just takes a long time but we don't think that running drastically less would speed up or improve that recover. Active recovery as always. The most I should possibly do is drop workouts for a while. So I have decided to not race this weekend and stop workouts for a while. Probably until december or january except for the occaisional threshold stuff.
This is what I see a lot of my winter base looking like. Perhaps 4 and 6 or even 3 and 7 many days with a tempo once a week and a long run of 14-16 miles once a week. Probably more of it towards 8min pace once I have my mileage up to 70 again.
PM: 5.2 Gonna hit 60 this week. Because of my exam I got a slow start to the week. But not a bad idea to keep it fairly easy still. Next week I will probably pick it up to 70. Anyone have any thoughts about doubles and whether it makes any difference to make one run longer and the other shorter? I don't see much point in getting out the door for any less than 5 and I can't really do consistent days of over 12 or so miles at this point. I don't recover fully.
Went to watch the downhill mile race and the turns were just as bad as I expected. It would have taken off 6 seconds easily if they had had a linear course. But the times were still decently fast considering the extremely localness of this race. My club went 1-2 with jordan in first with 4:31 and henry well behind him in 4:46. That is both of their best mile times, but for jordan it is pathetic because he ran 1:56 800 in highschool. If he just put down a consistend 50-60 mile base he would run 4:20s unaided right off base and low 4:20's with speed work on top of the base. I wish I had his talent.
