Weekly Training Wrap - 12/10 - 12/16

Another good week in the books. True to my plan, it was mostly easy running overall. But I did add in just a bit of some early cycle quality, particularly on Sunday's long run. A significant goal of this cycle was to have well thought out long runs and less "just logging big miles". The plan Sunday was to run each segment of the run faster, providing a progressive-quality element to the end of the run. We ran our segment splits like this:

• Loop 1 - 9 miles @ 9:21, 138 avg. HR
• Loop 2 - 9 miles @ 8:50, 142 avg. HR
• Loop 3 - 6 miles @ 8:12, 149 avg. HR

The workout was all on the local hills around my house and we averaged nearly 100 feet of vertical per mile. So this was by no means a typical flat, road workout. I honestly wasn't sure how much I had left in the tank after I made my final stop at home around mile 18. I told my running buddy Jon that I wanted to try and get the overall pace of the run under 9-minutes on the last segment. Before long, we were just cruising and had dropped the pace to 8:51. I was certainly tired at the end, but I wouldn't say I was wiped out like I was after my first 20 on November 18th.

Perhaps the biggest highlight this week was my 5K race on Saturday. Both of my kids ran with me and we had a blast. I kept my daughter company during the Turkey Trot in November, so I decided to run with my son this time (he's a little faster). He ended up running a 27:45 5K as an 8-year old! You wouldn't believe the number of comments that he and his buddy Chris (a 7 year old) got as they passed many adults. My daughter ran pretty hard even without me around to push her. I am proud of them both and certainly wouldn't be disappointed if they became runners.

Being that it is December 17th, I have started to think a lot about my year and all the places running has taken me the past twelve months. While I have many events and races that I am proud of this year, getting past my Summer injury and learning to run healthy is near the top of my proudest accomplishments. I can honestly say at this moment that I am running as close to 100% healthy as I have all year. My left ankle feels better after being a chronic ache for almost 9 months. My knee is feeling great, other than some left over internal scar tissue from my fall. Even my lower back is feeling significantly better than it has in a while, particularly after a long run like yesterday. Looking at my training log and listening to my body, I think I am due for a cut back week. I have gone 6 weeks of hard build up and it is time. My legs are feeling a bit fatigued and I am feeling less motivated to hit my cross training workouts as I recover from my running days. As a bonus, this fits better into my "life schedule". 

Day	Miles	Notes
Monday	Rest	PT exercises
Tuesday	9	Easy Maffetone
Wednesday	6	Easy Maffetone (P90x - Chest and Back)
Thursday	5	Easy
Friday	Rest	Iron Strength Workout
Saturday	6	Super Easy (Avg HR 131)
Saturday	3	Santa's Stampede 5k with my kids
Sunday	24	Progressive Super Long
Total	54	About 3800 vertical feet