After 3 consecutive weeks of 90 plus miles, I decided that I needed a slight break in the action. I wanted to be able to run a halfway decent 20-miler on Sunday, so I took it relatively easy on Friday and Saturday. Boy, did I need it! I only ran 8 easy miles on Friday, but the legs felt like concrete and had absolutely no life in them. Saturday was also a very easy 11, and more of the same. Lead legs and fighting through every mile. The legs are not sore and I am not in any pain, just zero pop or energy. However, after the slight cutback, a couple of Saturday naps, lots of eating, followed by a good night's sleep, I was feeling pretty good today. My best case scenario would be to run the 20 as a progression, with the last few miles getting in the 6:30 range, but I knew, based on how the past few days went, that would be asking too much. Did the first few miles at "Huey" pace, which includes plenty of stopping and starting. Then I settled into an 8:45 pace for the early miles and very, slowly and gradually worked my way under a 7 minute pace. The legs still felt heavy and I don't think I could have run much faster even I wanted to, but still a vast improvement over Friday and Saturday.
So, ended up the week with about 86 miles and will probably be around 370 for the month. I did get in a pretty decent tempo run on Tuesday, when I ran 12 miles with half of those below 6:48 pace. For the upcoming week, I think I might forgo some mileage again for an attempt at quality. I have pushed my legs to the brink and only have about 7 weeks to bring them back to life. Time for a mini recovery then some fine tuning.
Happy Running!
Rick
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