Climbing Mt Hanson to Chicago

Halfway there: 9 weeks to go

I wondered how my speedwork session on Tuesday would go.

I felt pretty tired as I jogged the 2 miles to the track  with 6x800m w/400 recoveries on the schedule. But, I did them and I did them all in the same time: 3:45 (7:30 m/m). This is faster than Hanson's says I should be going but I don't find them that bad. These are basically Yassos except I am only doing 6 rather than 10 or whatever he has you doing. 

I have to say that running 6 Yassos on tired legs is way more difficult than 10 on fresh legs. I could have maybe done 10, but it would have been killer.

It was also warm for here, 67F, and pretty muggy with high foggy clouds blocking the sun. Quite weird weather actually but that else is new?   I took my shirt off because no sun and then helped me stay cool. The good news is that my HRs are showing that the warmer temps and higher humidity are not effecting me as much. Perhaps that will be useful for Chicago.

We flew to Bozeman Mt for the rest of the week for a wedding and decided to move one of my easy days to Wednesday so that I would not have to run on Thursday, our travel day. 

I took it fairly easy since I was tired from the speedwork but felt good enough to do a couple of 10-20 second strides at the end of the run.

The next three runs in Bozeman were at  4600 feet +.

Friday called for  the moved 8 mile tempo (plus 1.5 mile warm up and cool down for total of 11 miles). 

I ran to the local high school track (about 2.5 miles) and did 7 miles there, then ran 1 mile of tempo on the road (lots of traffic stops to for walk lights though) and finished up with about 12 miles total.

The timings for the tempo were taken from the lap timing, not the GPS so they were spot on and very close to 8:52 m/m

That was a pretty intense workout  at 4600 ft. There was also about 400 feet of climbing to get to the track.

The next day I did an easy 8, also a lot of it on the track and the day after I had tempo I took it slow knowing I had the 15 miler the next day.

Of course during this time I was also on my feet a lot for the wedding (which was a blast) and partying and such. I tried to keep the wine and beer consumption pretty low knowing I was going to be having to rise early the next day for all this running...but sometimes I probably slipped up a bit ;)

The long run was a bit difficult. I was not able to hold my 9:30 pace what with all the running previously (including the tempo one day closer to the long run than normal) , the altitude, the partying and the slight hills..but I did enjoy a great run all around Bozeman which is not very big and can be toured quite extensively in 15 miles 8) 

I'm hoping next long run in two weeks goes better. 

Date	Runs	Miles	Pace	BPM	YPB
2014-08-04 Mon	1	8.0	10:21	109.6	1.567
2014-08-05 Tue	1	8.2	10:05	118.2	1.504
2014-08-06 Wed	1	7.5	10:11	112.0	1.556
2014-08-08 Fri	1	12.2	9:35	118.5	1.560
2014-08-09 Sat	1	8.3	10:27	109.2	1.552
2014-08-10 Sun	1	15.1	9:45	115.9	1.569
Summary	6	59.4	10:00	114.4	1.554

A pretty high mileage week. YPBs all pretty darn  good...Of course I've learned that the cardiac economy comes for 'free' with training hard and doesn't mean squat about marathon ability in the last critical miles. Hence the Hansons training....I would still like to find a quantifiable metric that could indicate this property during training. 

Summary of the first 9 weeks:

Date	Runs	Miles	Pace	BPM	Elev+	Elev-	YPB
2014-06-09 Mon	6	42.4	9:36	120.0	673.2	674.6	1.523
2014-06-16 Mon	6	42.6	9:54	120.3	447.1	445.7	1.490
2014-06-23 Mon	7	49.0	10:10	120.7	1143.4	1120.3	1.484
2014-06-30 Mon	6	40.4	10:07	120.3	1344.7	1345.4	1.547
2014-07-07 Mon	5	32.8	10:27	113.7	412.7	425.6	1.506
2014-07-14 Mon	6	48.7	9:58	118.9	461.1	460.4	1.497
2014-07-21 Mon	6	55.3	9:58	116.4	828.6	828.4	1.535
2014-07-28 Mon	6	50.9	9:48	120.5	512.9	514.6	1.538
2014-08-04 Mon	6	59.4	10:00	114.4	1423.5	1415.9	1.554
Summary	54	421.6	9:59	118.1	7247.2	7230.8	1.521

The pace this week (10:00) a bit slower than last week due to the long run being a bit slower. But I'm happy...so far, so good. The knee is still "there" but still slowly getting better even after this big mileage week.

I foolishly don't own a travel sized foam roller (and the hotel exercise room had no such thing) so I'm a bit messed up after running in Bozeman, but that should clear up with some extensive rollering.

This coming week is the last 'speedwork' session on Tuesday with 3x1600 w/600 rec,  after that it's all 'strength' runs which are 10s per mile faster than MP (8:42 m/m for me).