Monday 8/18: 5 miles, 42 minutes. Easy run with 8x10s surges at the end. Workout called for 6, but it felt so great to stretch my legs out and sprint a bit, that I added a couple extra on the end, bringing the pace down to 3:30 miles, according to my Suunto.
Tuesday 8/19: 46 minutes, 4.2 miles. I had a hill workout on the schedule for Wednesday, and wanted to see if my favorite River Gorge hill was long enough, so I took to the trails for an easy (very easy) scouting run. Sadly, even at a very easy pace, the hill I was hoping for was still less than 2 minutes long. This relegated the next day's workout to the roads. This run, though, reminded me again that I am, at heart, a trail runner.
Wednesday 8/20: 5.5 miles, 48 minutes. 4x400m (125') hill repeats, + 3x2min repeats between 6:10 and 6:30 pace. Stepped out the door with the legs feeling flat, and they didn't feel that much better throughout the run, but I sucked it up and bore through the workout any way. I missed starting my watch on the first repeat, but the others were 1:53, 1:53, and 1:51 for the Ramsey Repeat. Even at a moderate pace, I haven't lost that much. I would love to see what I can do full bore on this hill again. I liked doing the additional post-hill repeats (well, they were difficult at the time, but I like them now). I think it builds some mental toughness that I will need in the Icebox 480 in November.
Thursday 8/21: Off? I Think I may have actually run this day, but I don't see it in my log.
Friday 8/22: (AM) 6 miles, 48 minutes. Easy and then a section of moderate down Summit and back. Felt good despite the hard week so far.
(PM) 4 miles (est) and 4 hours on my feet at the Fair. The Great Minnesota Get Together was as vast and confusing as always. I'm not sure whether my distance was accurate, but I would bet we walked at least one mile per hour. Probably more. And I ate absolutely nothing that came on a stick.
Saturday 8/23: 5 miles, 5 hours on my feet. We headed, you guessed it, back to the Fair. This time we decided to see the animal barns and take in some of the glory that is the Fair during the daytime. I did not make it through without a pretzel dog (on a stick), but we did a fair amount of roaming once again. Thankfully, it was a relatively cool day, with the temperature hovering between 70 and 75 under cloudy skies.
Sunday: Off. Travelled to Pittsburgh.
Monday 8/25: 4.75 miles, 49 minutes, 500'+ elevation. Headed over to Frick Park in Pittsburgh to see what the trails were like. There were a lot of ups and downs. In fact, I'm not sure there was anything but ups and downs for this entire run. If anything, I think the elevation is low. I ended up on some mountain bike trails that, at times, I was unsure if I was supposed to be on. But I will say that I find dashing up, and jumping off, mountain bike obstacles to be very entertaining. I added surges into my run this way.
Tuesday 8/26: 4 miles, 33 minutes, 250' elevation. Took it easy and ran the three quarters of a mile over to Schenley (sp?) park in Pittsburgh from my Hotel. Saw, for the second day in a row, what I think must be either the Pitt or CMU women's cross country team doing a long hill workout. Surprisingly nice trails, even if they were wide gravel bike paths.
Wednesday 8/27: Off
Thursday 8/28: 6.75 miles, 56 minutes, 400' elevation. Again over to Schenley. This time I ran with my friend and coworker E for a little while before taking off to do 7x2 minute intervals. Workout said for 6:10 to 6:30 pace again, but I had to run based on effort due to the hilly nature of the park. This meant that during my intervals, my pace ranged anywhere from 4 minute pace to 9 minute pace on a particularly nasty uphill. The day off must have done wonders, because my legs didn't feel tired even at the end, even though I definitely pushed myself.
Friday 8/29: 3.5 miles, 30 minutes. Squeezed in another quick lap of Schenley before heading to the airport.
All in all, a very satisfying two weeks, even if I did not get my long runs in like I need to. My turnover is coming back, and I know that I can run for long periods of time.
My focus now, though, has to shift to getting my long runs in on the weekends. This past weekend I opted to sleep in on Saturday (on which day I still walked around the Minnesota Zoo for several hours), headed to Duluth on Sunday (and proceeded to longboard, which is a much better workout than you might think).
Monday I did run longer, hitting an hour twenty. This week, my goal is to push that out to 1:45 and up it as much as I can the following weeks until I reach 3+ hours. From that point on, I plan to sub out one shorter, harder workout during the week for a longer mid-week run. Ideally, I will also get a back-to-back weekend in in October before the race in November. If I can pull that off, I might have a shot at running for a full 8 hours.
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