Progress

Making progress in the return this go around. Not as quickly as I'd like, but can't get greedy. This week I ran 44 miles total in six days. Only one day off and no bike. Only one weight workout.

Made it back out to the trails at Percy Warner Park to run the red and white trails. It was the best effort to date. Cooler weather made a tremendous difference.

Minute on and a minute recovery workout showed my speed still needs lots of improvement.

Progression run this morning went ok, little warmer than last week. Planned on running 30 minutes easy (8:30 pace), 30 minutes moderate effort (8:00 pace) and 30 minutes harder effort (7:30 pace). Wore the heart rate monitor and planned on around 140, 150 and 160 bpm for each segment. Didn't quite work out to plan. The first 30 minutes were way to easy, didn't hit 140 until almost the last mile. It was a slower effort than a ultra slog pace; 10:00, 9:31 and 8:45.

Next segment went better. Ran about 152 bpm for the entire 30 minutes and felt really comfortable. Had the Garmin display set to only show heart rate and distance. I didn't want to know the pace until I downloaded. 7:42, 7:36, 7:47 and 7:49. Little quicker than I wanted but it was on the greenway, nice and flat.

Last segment just couldn't seem to get the legs to turn over. Only able to get the heart rate above 160 on the rises. Mostly it was stuck around 158 bpm and felt almost like a tempo effort. Happy with the results. 7:20, 7:32, 7:25 and 7:34. Total of 12 miles on the morning.

Tough thing about marathon training is balancing all of the workouts with everything else. I'd like to get one trail run, one speed session and one long run in each week. I'd also like to run with the guys at least once a week. This past week worked out really well. Did end up running solo for the progression run, only because I didn't want to run the hills with the guys or go back out to PWP. Next week I'll have to try meet the guys for at least one run.