National Marathon Training week 17

Monday: Finally feeling better from my sinus infection and decided to do the Nog run on Monday night. Met Micheal at Tir na Nog in downtown raleigh to do a 3 mile run followed by free food and not free beer. He's a bit faster than I and wanted to start with the 8 - 9 min pace group. I said what the hell and took off with him. After the first two miles in 17 something I started to lag back and cruised in the last mile around 10 min pace. No warmup and running 5k pace was tough, but after a week off my legs were up to it, but I did get a nasty side stitch.

Tuesday: Track workout. 7 miles total
I had a 5,4,3,2,1 lap workout at 2:05 - 2:10 per lap with a 400 jog between. did my 2 mile warmup and was anxious to see how my legs would respond. Felt really good and hit all my numbers, but I was noticing that during my recovery my HR was not going down as low as normal, so after the 3 lap set I decided to cut it short by skipping the 2 lap set. Did my 1 lap in 2:03, then jogged back to the rec center. My legs were hurting big time after lunch. Might swim tomorrow instead of the back to the core class to rest the legs a bit.

Wednesday: Swim
woke up and actually felt good, like I wanted to exercise, it's been a while...
so I went for a swim. My legs were sore from yesterday's speed work and I felt the pool would be better than BTC today. Did a nice easy workout in my 92 degree pool ( note to self, turn down the heater ). 1.1 mile in 25 mins, mixed pull and swim

Thursday: Run 7.5
today was an 8 miler at an easy pace. I told the coach I would do the 10k loop and then if I felt good at the end I would tack on some more. I met Matt in the locker room, he's a bit faster than I as well, and he had 8 also. I was a little tentative about running with him as I wasn't sure how fast I could handle, but he said he was ok with going slow and we headed out. Ends up I felt fairly well and we did the loop and were at 10:10 pace so we decided to add some and I finished with 7.5 miles at 10:10 pace and felt good. It was a nice change. Off tomorrow, then 17, including a 20k race in the middle on Saturday...

Friday: off day

Saturday: coach bubba race report is here http://slowburntt.blogspot.com/2009/02/coach-bubba-race-report.html, total miles 15

Sunday: swimming
Woke up and did my swim early. Felt fairly good, but legs sore so it was nice to have my workout say over half should be pull.
did an easy warmup of half swim / half pull
then did a hard set of 12 mins pull and paddles at a good clip followed by 5 x :45 swim at 2.6 with :15 rest. Then an easy cool down of breast stroke and back stroke and for good measure did some yoga in the pool to stretch out the hips.

next week is the last really hard week before tapering, 41 total miles with a 22 mile run on Saturday

weekly miles: 33