Wednesday, February 16, 2011

T-5 Weeks to LA, T-8 weeks to S2S. What's the plan?

Five more weeks to LA. This may not seem like much time to peak to you, but after running 4 marathons in 6 months, I'm thinking I've got oodles of time 8). I used to think 18 weeks was barely enough time!

After feeling a bit tired on Sunday's run and then resting Monday, I came back feeling GREAT on Tuesday and took what would normally be an easy run and hammered it a little  bit (4.75 miles @ 8:58). I felt fast and relaxed and really enjoyed the faster running (which I've been avoiding for a few months), hitting 8:10 pace for about 2 miles near the end.

To feel this way so soon after a marathon is a first for me, and I hope a sign that I'm building endurance and not just beating myself into the ground...don't get me wrong..I'm still cautious.


We all know when you hit the bricks and feel like crap, you need to take it easy and not try to hold to some stupid schedule you fantasized-up when you where feeling good.

Conversely when you feel great, you need put hammer down,  blow off that poky 10:00 pace and let the horse RUN.


I was thinking to myself how I dearly wish I could bottle that feeling and have some of it in 20 years from now... but no...can't be done, so best to enjoy it and remember it.

The Stanford Dish (i.e. radio telescope)
Wednesday it's back to the Kinvara's and time for running the Stanford Dish path. This open space preserve trail is about a 3 mile distance from my house and is 4 miles around so the total run is about 10 miles. 

Luckily the rain held off and I got the entire 10 mile run in with only about 1-2 minutes of very chilly rain (ice pellets for a second). I had my arm warmers with me (birthday present from Toni ;) and these were just the ticket.


double rainbow and oak trees
Of course where there's rain, and occasional sun, you may get rainbows and boy what a beauty we saw today! If you look closely you'll see that it's actually a double rainbow..with a fainter bow outside and above the bright one. The camera does not do it justice


 The Kinvaras were great, no problems on the downhills, ultra comfy, ultra light feeling, but with enough cushioning for my old bones to survive 8).

I think they are on track to be my new go-to marathon training and racing shoe! (Sorry Nike Pegasus..it was a nice relationship I had with you, but time to move on).

I still like running in the Nike Free's, the flexibility can't be beat for the road feel. I'll still use them for my shorter/medium  <10 mile runs.
dish round trip from my house
This is the hilliest run I've done in a long time: about 750' of up and down. I know that's not very impressive for some of you out there in the blogosphere, but for me it's a pretty tough run. I'm hoping this will toughen me up to another level.


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As you might gather from this weeks running so far, my plan for the next 5 weeks, qualitatively speaking,  is to do more speed-work and hilly trail running  for 3 weeks, then just faster running but lower tapering mileage, leading up to LA.  I will do one 20 mile + trail run at the end of that three weeks, LA will be another long run, and then I'll maintain that conditioning until S2S (Skyline-to-the-Sea) ...but with no more really long runs for that 3 weeks between LA and S2S. 




I really need the hilly trail runs in preparation for S2S which has 4000' of up, and 6000' of down. I'm not that afraid of the up (I'll walk it) but I really need stronger quads for the down, else I'll probably fall down and face plant a few times when I get really tired and the trail gets technical. (a fancy world for SUCKY)

I've been reading up on how to run a 50k and based on that I think my 6:30 estimate may be too aggressive for a first time...so my current notion is more like 7:00.

I've always been really bad about doing hill running and I'm not expecting to fix that too much in the next 8 weeks...just enough to keep from trashing my quads completely.

The race cutoff is 8 hours so no problem there.

How do you train for hilly races? How do you feel about bloggers that ask questions at the end of their postings to get you to comment 8)?


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2 comments:

  1. Good to hear the Kinvaras are working for you. as with most running, training similar to the course works best - I love hill repeats and try to do sprints one week and longer slower climbs the next.

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  2. Glad to hear that the rain held off for you. I'm just south of you in Los Gatos and I got pelted by hail. The trails around Stanford are awesome!

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