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Week 40
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Well, we're 40 weeks into this incarnation of the 50+ thread. I'm grateful to have this venue to share with you our the trials and tribulations of training into the second half century of our lives. With that, I'm also grateful to be celebrating our daughter's 20th birthday today. She has become a wonderful young lady, who strives for independence, yet knows where to come when life gets too stressful. We'll have a nice celebration this evening with a few of her best friends. We feel very blessed.
I had another fairly solid week, hitting 51+ miles on 7 days of running, with three harder efforts. My weekly log reads as such:
S: 7 easy
M: 7 w/5k hard tempo in 18:43
T: 5.3 easy
W: 6.2 easy
R: 10 w/ 5 miles at a harder pace (6:48 avg on the 5)
F: 5 easy
S: 10.8 Fartlek (avg pace 7:12)
Total: 51.3 miles
Comments:
a) Monday's hard tempo was as hard as I've run this 5k segment; it was a very even effort. It's not a great loop, as it's got 17 right-angle turns in it, but it's fairly flat (2 short uphills), and allows me to run hard without crossing any major streets.
b) During Thursday's harder section, I was joined by a training buddy. We cruised through the first three at about a 7:15-7:20 pace, then picked up the pace for the last 2, finishing the last two in 6:20 and 5:45.
c) The Fartlek run Saturday doubled as a hill workout; I used the fact that we've got a lot of rolling hills (as those that were here in '09 for club cross know), to simply push all the uphills. That amounted to 14 hard efforts ranging from 40s-150s. I'm very sore this morning.
That's three weeks in a row right around the 50 mpw range with three workouts each week. It's time for a down week. I'll probably get low 30's in this week, with maybe one workout. Given that I direct this Science Olympiad event next Saturday, I'll be plenty busy that will make it difficult to get the miles in this week anyways, so a down week works out well.
Glad some of you, at least, will venture down to Lexington at the end of the year. The course will be slightly modified, as they've extended the dog park into where the nice long chute start was. So the start had to be moved. Still a nice course though.
Sorry about the Plantar Fasciitis KP, I don't have any advice as it is one of the few ailments that I'm fortunate not to have suffered through (knock on wood.) Hope you can find relief soon.
It's been a fairly busy week at work, so I've not had a lot of time to peruse the boards for master's related topics. I do want to send a shout-out to a local guy (not a master's runner), who has set out to cross the US solo touching all of the contiguous lower 48 states. He started last week at Venice Beach in LA, and is most the way towards Las Vegas as of today. He is pushing a running baby stroller with his gear (food, tent, etc). He's raising money for the American Heart Association (he's a medical researcher in that area by trade, although he quit his job at the University to take on this challenge) Here's his website:
http://willpoweredrun.org/
. May his youthful spirit guide him safely on this journey. Godspeed!
Hope all is well in your corner of the world. Training or recovering, it's all important, so let us know how it's going, regardless.
Cheers!