Week 6, Plan Deviation

This week was a cut back week where every run was supposed to be an 8 miler of easy pace.  Things got sort of turned around and I didn't do one run as planned -- but I think it turned out pretty good.

I ran over 30 miles this week with this lovely lady.  Photo from our 20 on Sunday.

Sunday: 20.2 miles @ 10:01 pace;  Alyssa had the awesome idea of participating in a 6 hour race (you run a 1 mile loop as many times as you like in the 6 hour time frame) to get her last long run for SFM done.  Her idea snowballed and before you knew it, there were TONS of Bay Area bloggers coming to take part. A few of us decided that in order to break up the monotony of scenery and flat elevation we would arrive a little early and run out to, across, and back from the Golden Gate Bridge.  That clocked us 7 miles so we did 13 loops to finish with 20 miles.  I stuck with my pal Karin the entire 20 miles.  My fastest 20ish miler to date was at this same pace pre-Texas Marathon.  But today I felt like I was holding back.

Tuesday:  8 miles including 6 miles @ 8:22 pace;  I wasn't supposed to be doing any speed work this week but I missed this run when my calf was acting up.  Next week I have 7 miles at tempo and I felt I needed this 6 mile effort to get me mentally ready for next week.  I beat my tempo pace from the other week and overall felt really strong the entire time.

Wednesday:  7 miles @ 9:45 pace; My legs were very heavy this morning so I took it easy.

Friday:  10.3 miles @ 9:34 pace; Karin was doing her long run of 16 miles today.  Since no long run was on the docket and I thought we'd be running at a 10:00 pace again, I offered to run a couple extra miles with her.  But then she said she wanted to push the pace a little.


Holding off a couple of days on the 20 miler that should have been done last week kicked my sore calf to the curb.  It was 100% normal for every single run this week.  After this cutback week my training plan really starts to take off in mileage.  Put on your seat belts!