Goals:

• Finish strong with the Pfitz 12/47 plan
• Be diligent about recovery
• Get comfortable in the 40-50 mpw range to prepare for post-race base building
• Get faster (duh, but still worth mentioning)

Schedule:

• Monday: Rest
• Tuesday: 8 GA + (150m on/250m off x4) x2
• Wednesday: 7 GA
• Thursday: 8 total, incl. recovery 5K
• Friday: Rest
• Saturday: 8 total, incl. 10K time trial
• Sunday: 10 endurance

Total: 40 miles

Recap:

This was supposed to be a recovery week. Somehow, at the end of it, I’m really not feeling very recovered.

On Tuesday, Ben and I were finishing up our staycation celebrating our first wedding anniversary, so the run got pushed to nighttime. That run went okay, but then I had another seven the next morning that just felt sluggish.

Wednesday morning, one of my coworkers told me that our company got some entries into the Mavs 5K race the next day. Thursday was my regular rest day and I was already feeling pretty blah for the week, but I thought I might be able to put my training to use and get a 5K PR, and if I didn’t feel that, I could just do the race as my 3 mile recovery run scheduled for Friday instead.

On Thursday afternoon, I started feeling shin pain. I warmed up for a couple of miles headed down to the race and then decided to just “pace” my coworker, his friend, and my brother to their first 5K finishes. We did a good solid run/walk to finish in 35:XX. They sprinted the last 100m and loved it and I think at least one of them might continue with running. I, on the other hand, was feeling some serious shin pain. I tried a cool down run to get home a little faster but my leg just wasn’t having it. Despite having run extraordinarily easily that day, the pain was getting worse. I walked the rest of the way home. By that night, I was having trouble walking on it at all.

Then, of course, the next morning, I was back to 80% fine, and by the end of the day, my shin was completely painless. C’est la vie, I suppose. I don’t understand how my body works.

Saturday’s 10K time trial went pretty well, given that I pushed it off until 6:30 PM when it was in the 70s instead of just doing it in the morning. I set a 10K PR by about 30 seconds from one a couple of weeks ago and got on the leaderboard for some Strava segments, but didn’t do as well as I’d hoped. I have another 10K TT in two weeks (no tuneup races falling right for me, so time trials it is) and I think that’ll go better.

Today’s ten miler was a lot like Wednesday’s run. My left hamstring was really tight and it was pretty warm outside. I still had a decent pace, but mentally, I was just ready for it to be over.

Looking forward:

Next week is peak week! I’m scheduled for 47 miles, and based off of past experience, I’ll probably hit 50 from accidental extra miles. I’m not complaining; anything over 48 miles is a distance PR now. Considering I started the year at about 20 mpw, I’m thankful that I can hang at this mileage.

It’s starting to hit me that the race is less than a month away. I’m 60% terrified and 40% excited. I’m not sure what I’m shooting for time or pace-wise, but it’s probably somewhere between 1:45 and 1:40. I’d be absolutely ecstatic to go sub-1:40, but I think that’s pretty much impossible this time. If I exceed expectation and am sitting at 1:40:XX at the DRC Half and feel good about my race recovery (and maybe win the lottery or something) I might try again in December at the Dallas Marathon’s HM.

I’ve also put about 140 miles on my New Balance Vazee Paces and I’m definitely going to do a writeup on them soon. I got a couple more pairs on clearance to hopefully get me through at least half of next year. Plus, I got some more Tracksmith gear with my PR Bonus and have definitely put it through its paces, and I’m looking forward to putting some pictures of that stuff up soon. There is a lot of fun stuff in the works around here, so I’m going to try hard to get it all up in the next few weeks!