Half marathon training – Week 9 – Sharpening
Here’s the conundrum of the week. How is it that I can travel to Europe and recover from a nine hour time change in a few days but a one hour time change for daylight savings time messes me up for almost a week? I blame the morning darkness. Even through it was a struggle to get out of bed and get out the door I was really pleased with Tuesday and Thursday’s runs. I consider myself to be in the sharpening mode of training and the 6x800m was an excellent way to fine tune my speed. Then on Thursday I ran a nice progressive (each mile faster than the previous) tempo run and managed to pull it off at a faster pace than when I did the same workout four weeks ago.
I’m not quite sure when I became a person who says “it’s just a half marathon” but I’m not feeling the usual level of anticipation I feel one week out from race day. It’s not that I’m not looking forward to the race, I’m just not putting a lot of pressure on myself. I figure I’ll run the thing and whatever happens happens. The one thing I do have going for me is that a laissez faire attitude is what lead to my current half marathon PB from 2007. I have a lot of faith in my training program too so I have no doubt that I’m well prepared.
I haven’t even checked a weather report yet! I figure it can’t be much worse than my run this morning. It was 2C, windy and snowing huge wet snow clusters. I can’t call then snowflakes because they were big enough to hurt when they hit your face! They were flying around like little mini commets. I was soaked by then end of a 45 minute run because everything melted once it hit my body. Talk about a mess!
I’m looking forward to taper week if only because it means an extra 15-30 minutes of sleep in the mornings!
| 09/03 | - | Rest day |
| 10/03 | 6.1 mi | Speedwork: 6x800m in 3:53/3:54/3:54/3:57/3:52/3:53 (1:00) |
| 11/03 | XT | 60 min on elliptical plus weights |
| 12/03 | 8.0 mi | Tempo run (moderate): 6mi @ 9:00/8:48/8:43/8:34/8:34/8:32 |
| 13/03 | - | Rest day |
| 14/03 | 10.0 mi | Long run: avg 161 bpm, 10:42 min/mile |
| 15/03 | 4.0 mi | Recovery run: avg 160 bpm, 10:58 min/mile |
| Total | 28.1 mi | YTD: 286.6 miles |