Week 4 12/3-12/9

Well I got in another good week of training.  It was only 43.5 miles in 5 days, but I ran a couple strong workouts.

12/3 - Coach moved today’s run to yesterday so we had the day off to recover.

12/4 - An easy 5.5 miles to start the week off.  We ran Richard Johnson in 35 minutes which is a respectable 6:40 pace or so.  The only hard part was that every 8-10 minutes there was a 10 second all out sprint.  Sadly the blood blister under my big toe got worse again.

Total 5.5 Miles, 35 Minutes

12/5 - Well today was supposed to be an easy 6 mile tempo at 5:45 pace, but Joffroi through our pace off by a lot on the first mile.  We ended up running a 5:11 mile which made the entire rest of the workout too fast, but it still wasn’t too bad.  The next couple miles went good as I got closer to pace running 5:29 and 5:47, then I started to feel sick to the stomach from eating too much for lunch.  I just stayed at a nice easy pace the next two miles hoping I wouldn’t through up, because my legs still felt great and they were both at 5:44 pace.  The last mile I figured I may as well just get this over with and ran a 5:24.  After the workout we had a miserable 2+ mile cool down to finish off the day.  Besides feeling sick it was a wonderful run.

Total 10 miles, 60 minutes

12/6 - I did a nice relaxing long run today.  I ended up running by myself, because everyone else wanted to do Martin Springs.  I don’t really know what route I took, but I ran several roads I’ve never seen before and that kept me from getting bored on the long solo run.  It felt great to go for a relaxing long run at just under 7 minute pace.

Total 12.5 miles, 85 minutes

12/7 - It was extremely cold out today for the run.  I had on pants, under armor, a long sleeve shirt, gloves, and a hat and was still freezing the entire run.  To go along with being cold my calves were a little bit sore too.  I ran a 6 mile loop with Gary and we did 3 of the 10 second sprints in the middle of it.  Probably one of the more miserable runs of the season, but my legs felt good after.

Total 6 miles, 38 minutes

12/8 - Today’s workout was really hard on the muscles.  I felt good while I ran it but as soon as it was over I could feel it.  We did 10×1 K on decreasing rest (3 min -20 secs/rep).  The last one was run on just 20 seconds recovery.  Despite the recovery going down my times stayed fairly consistent throughout.  The splits were: 3.16, 10, 13, 12, 12, 13, 13, 13, 14, and 04.  I was really happy with the fact that I was able to run my fastest one on no recovery.  The other bad factor was that the track was still covered in snow and ice so we had to run on the road with a few small hills and in about 30 degree weather.

Total 9.5 miles, 56 minutes