Weekly Training Wrap - 6/9 - 6/15

Lot's to say this week... First, the data points continue to collect and I am more and more confident in my new LCHF diet. My weight is back down to 186 lbs, from about 190 earlier in the year. And, I finally did another Friel test to find my lactate threshold heart rate. The last time I did this test was in January of 2013 and the results were quite different, with a heart rate of 172 for the test portion compared to the 177 from last time. I was relatively fit at both points in time, so I don't think that was the difference between the two readings. I honestly have seen a significant difference in my heart rate since I began eating this diet. I ran a 6:38 pace -- nearly 10K pace -- for the relevant portion of the test, which is a darn good effort, faster than my hour pace. I have gotten a touch careless on my eating over the weekend, but I will dial that back in to make sure my metabolic system is in a good place come race day.

Another factor of note this week was that I did my long run on Friday. My kids both had sports tournaments on Saturday and Sunday and it was really my best option. The significant thing is that it was the second time I have done a Friday long run the week after doing back-to-back longs. In both cases, this amounted to me running 80+ miles and more than 10K of vertical in a 7 day span. I don't like to do that often, but it gives me confidence having blocks of training like that in my back pocket going into a race.

The final thing that I want to touch on briefly is my training year to date. At this point in taper I like to evaluate what I have done differently. I wrote a memorandum on My Thoughts on Training a year ago and I think I stayed true to that with some twists. The first twist is the amount of trail miles I have run this year, nearly 500 YTD. Since I didn't train for any road races and was healthy for most of the Spring, I have put in a significant amount more trail miles than normal by this time. Of course, that also means I have put in quite a bit more vertical than I was expecting YTD (140K versus 100K expected). I have been averaging about 6 runs a week most of this Spring, which is about one more day than I normally do. That has brought me up to nearly 60 miles per week instead of the usual 55 or so. But, the majority of those miles continue to be easy in Zones 1 and 2. For speed work, I have spent more time doing Fartleks and Tempo workouts than interval workouts. I am a believer in changing paces (Fartleks) and in working on tempo/threshold training (tempos). The other big thing that I have done is really work on weight training and Yoga consistently, nearly every week. I began including 1-2 workouts per week at lunch to free up some time for additional cross training. We runners always complain that we don't have enough time, so I made time by devoting my lunch hour to cross training. This has been a great workout system for me and one I plan to continue.

This week is the final week of taper and next week we race!

Day	Miles	Notes
Monday	Off	Rest
Tuesday	8	Friel Test in the AM
Tuesday	4	Hill Repeats in the PM Strength Training Yoga
Wednesday	7	Easy at Lunch
Thursday	8	Bluffs in Heat
Friday	18	Deer Creek
Saturday	Off	Rest - Kids Sports
Sunday	6	Easy
Total	51	About 6,100 feet of vert