Week Fourteen Training Wrap-Up
Another successful week is in the books. The twelve-mile interval run on Tuesday yielded six mile splits under 8:10, while the ten-mile run on Thursday was completed at a fast 7:56 pace, making me feel cautiously optimistic that at least a PB at the Marine Corps is within grasp. The only downside was a pretty crappy (pun intended) nine-miler on Sunday, where I paid the price for overindulging at a wedding reception on Saturday.
Moving right along …
Week Thirteen Training Wrap-Up
I made it! Not only did I get through the hardest week of the program, but by switching up my 16-mile long run to 20 miles, I ran 61 miles–the most I have ever run in one week since this whole lark began. In the process, I crushed both my 12-mile interval and 10-mile tempo workouts (at 8:06 and 8:14 min/mile paces respectively, the latter in a torrential downpour).
Along the way, I ditched my MapMyRun app and went with Runkeeper to log my miles and calculate pace times. It had been messing up all summer, but the final straw was when it registered 18 miles for Tuesday’s 10-mile run, generating a hysterical map that had me running out of the park and straight across Onondaga Lake from Liverpool to Solvay then back across the lake to Baldwinsville before getting back onto the trail.
I may be a lot of things, but Jesus I am not.
Week Twelve Training Wrap-Up
After a rest day on Monday to recover from the Rochester Half, it was back to business. And business was good! The gorgeous weather inspired me to some strong midweek runs, while a nine-mile run on the Durand Eastman trial on Saturday and a twelve-mile run around the Canastota onion fields, filled with hundreds of pallets of harvested onions, were the icing on top of the cake.
If only everything could stay like this for another month …
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Week Eleven Training Wrap-Up
Despite the craziness, the first part of the week went better than I had anticipated. An unexpected, yet lovely, eight-mile run on the Schuylkill River Trail in Philadelphia while waiting for Tessa to be discharged from hospital on Tuesday morning,
and a hastily rescheduled sixteen-mile long run along the Erie Canal in Rochester on Wednesday formed the bulk of my mileage during the week. When added to Sunday’s Rochester Half Marathon, which I write about below, I came close to fifty miles for the week. I may have missed my total mileage goal by eleven miles, but I wasn’t too unhappy about the way things turned out. Continue reading
Week Ten Training Wrap-Up
This week, the weather in Syracuse was officially declared a heatwave, and the effect it had on my running was predictable. Monday’s gentle 7 miler turned into a grueling endurance test; Tuesday’s tempo run, on the hottest day on record since 1964, petered out halfway through and finished with walks and gentle runs.
I felt burned out and discouraged. I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel, but there was a lot of soul searching. The dream of a BQ and a sub-3:40 finish seemed to vanish in the haze.
Thankfully, the weather broke on Wednesday. By Thursday, I was back on my game with a strong interval run in Onondaga Lake Park, which is just a few minutes from work in downtown Syracuse and which will be my go-to route until the end of the program as daylight is now disappearing fast.
Another fifty miles in the books. I live to fight another week.
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Week Nine Training Wrap-Up
Plenty of positives to report this week despite a disastrous tempo run on Thursday. Due to scheduling problems, I had to run during the middle of an incredibly hot and humid day, and I lost all my water due to not screwing on my water bottle top correctly. So, as often happens with me, I wilted and died, even though I did finish the workout.
The other runs went extremely well, including the seventeen-mile long run that I detail in pictures below. I got some good hill work in this week, but most importantly, I made my weekly mileage with ease–the first fifty-mile week of the program and my first since May.
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Week Eight Training Wrap-Up
Yeah–a much better week! Despite taking two days off, I made my mileage and I crushed my nine-mile tempo workout on Thursday. The only downside to the week was my long run today. In addition to the problems I talk about later, I was also battling the fatigue of driving 550 miles and moving my son into his college dorm room on Saturday and my old nemesis–heat and humidity–on Sunday. I gave myself a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for Sunday, knowing that I was not going to be in the best of shapes for the task at hand. But we’re halfway through the program, and I can’t do that too many more times.
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Week Seven Training Wrap-Up
It was bound to happen. After two successful weeks following the Hanson’s program to a T, this week I missed my weekly mileage target in a big way. It was partly a conscious choice: I decided to forgo my gentle workout on Monday to rest up, which is not awful in the grand scheme of things providing I don’t do it too often. But I was also forced to sit out my Thursday night speed workout due to a weather forecast of torrential rain and thunderstorms that ended up looking worse on radar than they did in reality. As my routes are pretty exposed, I decided it was just too risky to attempt a run that night. That’s one I won’t get back.
Wednesday night’s gentle run also added to the general despair, as my body once again melted in the heat and humidity. Thankfully, a gorgeous run on Saturday, under ideal conditions and on a new route (the Genesee Riverway Trail south of Charlotte) restored my faith and paved the way for my first sixteen-mile long run of the program on Sunday. Once again, I had to fight the heat, but slow and steady won the day, even though I ended up over eight miles down on the week.
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Week Six Training Wrap-Up
The week started brightly enough, with a successful tempo run on the same course and over the same distance as week five. Only this time, I crushed it, pacing it just right to finish strong and fast.
But that was the only real highlight of the week. Fatigued from work and from the cumulative mileage of the program, I ran a lackluster interval run, then I crashed and burned ten miles into a twelve-mile long run on Saturday.
Admittedly, I ran further than the program called for and ran strongly and comfortably over the first eight miles, so it wasn’t all doom-and-gloom. But fatigue is starting to set in, and it won’t be going away until the program is over. The major challenge of training for a marathon–dealing with the constant tiredness–is now here.
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Week Five Training Wrap-Up
If I could dream up a great week of running, this week would be it. I did all the hard workouts successfully, ran the longest run of the summer since the Boilermaker and met my weekly mileage goal, all during a gorgeous stretch of weather and with no problems other than a few sore muscles.
I want to bottle this week for consumption this winter.
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Bruce Pegg 