2012 Training Log – Week 24

A rough start to this one, then I rallied and ended up with a good week. The time number is heavily skewed by all of the hiking on the weekend, but it all counts as far as I’m concerned. Some good time on the feet and at high altitude.

Monday
11 miles

Felt great during the first 3 miles, and was already composing my training log entry in my head. Something along the lines of – wow, 3 days off and back in action feeling great.

Then the wheels started to wobble before coming off completely at mile 7. I had to stop several times. I was badly overheated and had gone for the all-you-can-eat special at the buffet of suck. What a miserable run. Record heat and forest fire smoke made it like running in an oven while sucking on piece of charcoal.

These guys were waiting to pick at my carcass.

Tuesday
10 miles

Another cr@p sandwich on the menu today. This run was so bad it’s almost funny. I stopped about 100 times, then ended up walking the last mile. My calves actually felt good for once, but I had big-time foot issues. Seriously thinking about hanging up the running shoes and switching back to cycling for a while.

A sign of better things to come –

Wednesday
10 miles

After the terrible past two runs I’ve had most people would take that as a sign to back off, rest, wait for some sort of recovery to take place. Not me. I knew good run was in there, I just had to dig deep enough to find it. It helped immensely that today was about 20 degrees cooler than the previous two.

I decided to hit some intervals for the first time in months. .5 mile, .5 mile, 1 mile, .5 mile, .5 mile.

The first two .5 were 6:15 and 6:12 pace and felt under control. The mile was gradually uphill and I did it in 6:22 without pushing too hard, which told me my previous efforts on the .5’s were soft. I did the last two .5’s at 5:54 and 5:48 pace. I was doing 5-6 of these in the 5:40’s last fall, so I still have a ways to go, but I’m extremely happy to have a decent run and get some quality work done.

Thursday
10.5 miles

Steady 9 @ 7:45 pace on a hilly route. 1.5 cooldown. Happy with how this went after yesterday’s harder efforts.

Friday
7.6 miles

Easy recovery day.

Saturday
13 miles

Malcolm and I had a good day in the mountains. 5 x 14er summits. Topped out on Sherman at 1:00 in the morning, bivied under the stars near the trailhead, then up at 6:45 to hit the DeCaLiBron loop.