Sunday 022408, 12 miles, week in review, the upcoming week

Cool morning, but again, signs of spring out there. Did a 12 mile loop easy through Teller Farm from the house. I bounced into a couple of folks out at the Farm and ran with them for about 20 minutes before heading back home. Isabelle Road is having work done on it so it was totally closed to traffic - it was nice to be able to run down the middle of the road. Mostly I over-analyzed various niggles and aches and pains I was feeling, but it was a good steady run.

It was a good week. I had two runs at 2 hours with both of them including some fair amount of climbing. My mileage was 81 on the week, but the time on that was about 690 minutes (versus about the same amount of mileage last week, with less hills and about an hour less). I had a turn over workout as well.

This next week I am going to try dropping the mileage (50 miles comes to mind) and up the intensity slightly. My take on this that I will do easy days really easy or not run at all, and then get typical mileage on my hard days. I will look to do more core work, athletic work on those easy-off days but really lower the running volume. The objective here is to see if I can get a bit more spring in the legs for the hard days, and experiment a bit with the concept of a taper. I am also going to keep the food log next week as well (I am interested in seeing if a drop in mileage creates an upward shift in weight).

With February ending, I am about done with two training blocks. The first was a block of three months post Pikes where I did not train. I ran, but without structure, consideration to hard or easy, fast or slow, flat or hill. This ended with a vacation trip to Hawaii (and it was a good vacation, evidenced on several fronts including the gaining of nine pounds). This past three months (since that block) has been building back, attempting to get some turnover back, and transitioning "back into a runner." It has been training. I will look to up the focus in the next quarter by extending on what I have done, but upping the focus a bit (as described the other day).

Live it.