17 Weeks to Tacoma

So far, so good. Week 18 results:

Date	Miles	Pace	BPM	WHR%	Cad	Elev+	Elev-	YPB
2012-12-31 Mon	4.7	9:26	126.8	66.20	84.5	36.2	38.3	1.474
2013-01-01 Tue	7.5	9:43	121.7	62.08	84.8	79.2	81.1	1.493
2013-01-01 Tue	1.7	10:06	116.6	57.85	84.0	9.6	10.5	1.497
2013-01-03 Thu	4.6	9:39	130.0	68.87	84.7	17.8	17.8	1.411
2013-01-05 Sat	4.8	9:20	123.1	63.16	85.8	15.9	17.0	1.533
2013-01-06 Sun	9.8	9:39	119.8	60.47	84.4	42.6	42.4	1.524
Summary	33.1	9:37	122.9	63.04	84.7	201.3	207.2	1.494

Some more cold mornings, and some near rainy conditions but in the end pretty perfect running weather.

The Chi running changes are going well, I still have to be mindful of loose lower legs and more hip rotation at faster speeds. My calfs seem much better off indeed. 

I do have one minor annoyance near the old trigger points. After the run when I foam roller the muscle along the back of the bone on the outside of the calf it is a bit tender and sore. After I roll it and massage it it feels much better and then during the next few hours it goes back to normal. By the next day, there is no problem running again. This is getting better each day despite the mileage buildup in the last week so I'm not worried about it, but it is something I've never felt before.

I am boosting my mileage quite fast, so I'm being careful to only run at MAF paces and below (125 bpm). One problem I have is that even these low hard rates (65% of my Heart Rate Reserve) are still quite fast and as I get fitter they are even faster ..and then my legs are not liking it. 

Saturday and Sunday I seem to really ring the bell and was hitting very fast base paces of 9:10 - 9:15 m/m at 125bpm...so I had to ease off a bit. (note the YPB of 1.5+..that's good for me)

That's pretty good news considering it's so early in my training cycle, but it's also only two good runs...so not too excited about it, yet.

My current plan is to focus on base running, building mileage and start easing in hill repeats for the next 4 weeks. (20 runs).

I have some ideas for software tweaks that will give me detailed comparisons week by week with my CIM and Eugene buildups. I would really like to be able to track my relative fitness / training mix as I go to make quantitatively sure I toe the line in as good a shape or better then before.

I will be a year since I ran Eugene and I'm looking at a typical marathon slowdown with age from 56 to 57 of about 1min 40sec. I would like to hold 3:55  so it's all about small improvements and optimizations and metrics that track them. 

Sure, having a breakthrough buildup and running a big PR (3:50-3:52?) is a fun daydream, but I'm not counting on it.