A Good Training Week

One week ago was the Philadelphia Distance Run. I improved my time from last year by a bit more than three minutes. Finish time was 1:36:18. I expected better, but wasn’t really tapered having run 20 miles seven days prior and having done seven miles of speedwork just three days prior. Unfortunately, if this half-marathon is an indicator of my performance on Nov 2 at the ING NYC Marathon, I won’t hit my 3:10 mark. I need to dig deeper with my training.

And so I think I have — all my runs were outdoor except for the speed work. I ran an eight mile “easy run” on Tuesday (two days after the half-marathon) in 61 minutes. On Thursday I did speed work: 6 miles total, 4 x 1600 at 6:07… only possible because I was on the treadmill. On Friday I ran 7 miles in 51:27 — in the rain. I felt great though and think the rain helped.

This morning I started my 16 mile long run just before 6am. 20 minutes into the run, the rain came. And the rain never stopped. Sure, it keeps you cool but ’tis a bit of a drag running 16 miles in the rain. The sun never peeked through the clouds during my run. My performance was good — first four miles at an 8 minute pace, then slowed the pace to about 8:20-something.  I haven’t uploaded my garmin stats yet but I finished in 2:13. That’s two runs back to back in the rain. Yesterday I trained twice — an hour of karate at Gold’s and two hours of karate at the dojo. And my core training during the week is really making a difference – I feel more solid during my runs.

I tried something new today — I carried gatorade with me. In the past when I drank gatorade on the race course, it sat in my stomach like a rock. But I think I’m finally ready to take advantage of all the positive things it supposedly does for you during long runs. I plan to use gatorade in the NYC Marathon so I need to get used to it. The first few drinks I took today were unwelcome, as I’m used to simple water, but I adjusted. I carried a 24 ounce bottle of grape G2 and came close to finishing it. After the run, I downed two servings of muscle milk, finshed the gatorade, and drank another 20 ounces of water or so. I wasn’t dehydrated (as evident by my “color” during elimination) — I was just very thirsty. Through the remainder of the day, my hunger was insatiable. I think I may have consumed too many calories, but the bulk of them were good calories.

Next week’s training schedule is a relatively light one, but I have some extracurricular runs squeezed in. The sked calls for 8 miles on Tue, 8 miles on Thursday, 7 miles on Friday and 7 miles on Sunday. I’m running the JP Morgan Championship run (3.5 miles) Saturday with the News Corporation team. The race is on Park Ave in NYC at 9am. And tomorrow I’m doing a performance test, which includes two one-mile sprints. It will be interesting to see how that goes, the day after a 16 mile long run.

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