Training Recap: Sept. 8-15

I had a pretty detailed outlook on what I wanted to accomplish during this eight-day stretch. I log my miles on a weekly basis (7 days, Sun-Sat.), but don’t necessarily follow a seven-day rotation when scheduling key sessions and down days. I try not to hold myself too tight in terms of exactly when and where I will do a key session, but rather decide it needs to be done and let my body recover appropriately before taking on the next key session. So, if I have three key sessions in mind, I might complete them in seven days, or it might take ten days. In this particular time frame I had three goals and completed them in eight days. The three goals included: progression run, speed intervals, and ultra-stimulus.

The progression run was pretty cut and dry. It started with a two-mile warm-up, followed by six miles of progression (6:11, 5:51, 5:45, 5:35, 5:30, 5:27), and a two-mile cool-down. I was happy with how I felt. I can definitely feel gains in speed from when I did my first speed workout post–Burning River 100. All the miles felt smooth and relatively unforced.

The speed interval session was definitely not as long as some I have done, but I feel good about the benefits of the workout. It started with a two-mile warm-up, then 10x (35-40 seconds all-out) with 30-60 second recovery jog, seven miles normal pace, and one mile with 6x100 meter strides. I have done quite a few interval workouts that have ranged from 20-second up to 75-second intervals. I am really beginning to notice the improved leg turnover, as well as my normal pace decreasing (presumably from improved running economy).

The ultra-stimulus was actually a three-day session. I toyed with doing one really long run, but instead decided to spread out the fatigue, so I would be able to interject different elements into each day. Day One was a 23-and-a-half-mile day (14mi AM, 9.5mi PM) at paces of 6:30-45. The goal was to load my legs up with miles for the subsequent days. Day Two was 21 and a half miles of hilly terrain (16.5mi AM, 5mi PM). Again, more miles, but with a different type of stimulus (hills). The third day was a flat 20 miles with progression. The first 17 miles were done at 6:40 pace on gravel trail (mimicking the gravel fire roads that make up about 75% of Tussey Mountainback). The last three miles were a progression (5:40, 5:38, 5:22). I was really excited about this run. I thought my legs would feel much more tired going into the third day. I ended up feeling extremely energetic on the last three-mile progression. So much so that in retrospect I may have done five miles.

I followed a general rule of thumb for most of my runs in this eight day period. I took in no fuel during the runs, and very little before the runs. I took Vespa Ultra-concentrate before each of the key or goal sessions.

You can see my day-by-day breakdown below. If you're interested, please check out my full running log.