 |
| Do you know who this is? |
Sunday I did not do my hilly, pokey run....I was tired... and yah, mildly hungover 8), from a party on Saturday night. Sunday morning we had a early brunch and then afternoon event which made it hard to figure out how get it in a long run.
But I wasn't bothered..a step back week to 21 miles was probably a good idea after doing so much the week before. But this week I hope to hit 45-50 miles+ as the final week before my 2 week taper.
2 weeks you say? Isn't the marathon taper supposed to be three? Yes, it is. But that's if you are doing a traditional mega-peaking. If you are running races every 6-7 weeks you'd rather trade a slightly lower peak for a higher level of fitness on the next race.
Monday I did an easy 4.85 miles@9:54 m/m, 87 spm, with a couple of miles at 9:30-ish pace.
Tuesday I was ready to do the Stanford Dish hill run again: 9.85@10:09 m/m, which is about 6 minutes faster than my last time. I still walked the huge uphills at a fast clip, but this time I ran the downs much faster. No quad soreness the next day, either.
How do you run downhills? After much reading/surfing, I decided that a high stride rate works best here too...less deceleration on each foot fall and less leg extension means less rupturing of muscle fibers. Seems to work ok so far for 700' of down..we'll see how it works for 6000' of down at S2S..
I've always been gun shy of the dish run and have done a fairly modest hill loop instead..but I'm deciding that the mega hills are a really good strength builder. (assume you can survive them ;) I hope to be able to run more of the ups, but this path has a 6% grade for the first 1.5 miles, which is KILLER.
Wednesday, a cross training day..the usual 30 min of bike with 4x2 minute more intense sprints in there followed by 30-40 minutes of weights and floor exercises. My heart is really going during all this stuff as I don't rest between sets exercises..so the cardio is pretty good too.
I did the 'step downs' again...last time I did them I noticed a funny feeling in my knee a day later..I think I overdid it bit..this time I used one hand to hang on to something to take some of the weight off my knee as I did each rep. You'd think if you can run a marathon you could do an exercise like this thousands of times! But no...how about 10 times?
I'm definitely going on the theory with these exercises that if they seem hard, it must be good for me ...
Some rain showers dogging us here the rest of the week so I'm not sure how I'm going to do my 10/22 mile runs...no way I'm doing 22 on the treadmill..I'd rather get wet ;)
Thursday update: 4.86 miles@9:37 pace....a couple of miles in the middle at 9:15-9:20
Happy running!
I actually have more luck with a 2-week taper no matter how intense I've been training, that was a very long trial and error process but you will be great with the 2 weeks.
ReplyDeleteWhen I ran St. George Marathon, I got with my running guru friend (Maureen Roben, google her) and she told me downhills strides should be very quick. A slight lean forward as you do not want to be perfectly perpendicular. I said this mantra about 5 billion times in STG "Short, sweet, light on your feet." :)
Glad to hear you're a little party and not all business. I've had a few hangovers affect my running routine.
ReplyDeleteGood strategy to increase stride rate on downhills.