Fifteen Days

I just finished up a 15 day consecutive running streak.  It was daunting to look at this stretch on my training plan.  The first time I did this plan I modified the schedule to allow some rest days since I had previously not run more than 4 days in a week.  This time around I had eyed a couple of the workouts as potential rest days if things went badly, but I was committed to trying to stick to the plan if my body help up.  Until now I had never run more than 6 days in a row.

I ran a total of 133.5 miles over the 15 day period.  There were some days my legs were really tired. I learned to take those really slowly.  My cranky shin got pretty mad at me but I did all sorts of voodoo damage control on it that kept it from combusting.  I tried my best to run early every day so that I could try to maximize recovery time between runs.  I learned a lot about how my body recovers and what keeps me running healthy.  I am especially proud of my quality runs over this stretch of time.  I hit my paces on the hard runs which kept me from feeling like I was just running myself into the ground.  Over the period I ran over 16.5 miles total --sometimes 30 seconds at at a time, sometimes a mile at a time-- at a sub-8:00 pace which is pretty huge for me.

Amazingly, I didn't set a weekly mileage PR.  I logged 65.5 miles one week, but I checked and in June 2010 I ran 67 miles one week.  That week consisted of some pretty sluggy running when I did a double marathon stunt one weekend.  My 65.5 mile week had only a long run of 16.4 miles versus two 26.2 mile runs in the 67 mile week.  So I'm not sure you can really compare the two.  But as far as number crunching goes, it is what it is.

Talking to people who are much better at marathons than me, I've heard a general consensus that if you want to run faster you have to run more.  I definitely think there is a point of diminishing returns and I'm sure this point is very different for everyone.  There were days when I didn't question I was training harder, but had some internal debate about whether I was training smarter.  But I decided if I didn't push my limits a little I would never find out where that point was for myself.  There are probably better ways to increase your mileage (maybe a 10 day cycle or double days to allow for a more frequent rest day), but I find this an interesting experiment into how my body could take this sort of abuse.

At any rate, I am very proud of myself for sticking this out and turning my life around a bit to get it done.  I am looking forward to two delicious rest days this week.

8/15:  6 miles easy

8/16:  10 miles:  2 mi easy, 10K time trial, 2 mi easy

8/17:  8 mi easy

8/18:  7 mi easy

8/19:  10 mi easy

8/20:  10 mi easy with 30 sec at 5K pace every 3 min

8/21:  8 mi easy, 10 hill sprints

8/22:  7.1 miles:  2 mi easy, ladder intervals (1 min, 2 min, 3 min, 2 min, 1 min, 2, min 3 min at 3K-10K pace with equal duration active recovery), 2 mi easy

8/23:  8 mi easy

8/24:  16.4 miles:  6 mi easy, 5 mi:  90 sec @ 10K pace/90 sec easy , 2 mi easy, 3 mi hard

8/25:  6 mi easy

8/26:  9 miles:  2 mi easy, 4x1mile @ 10K pace with 3 min active recovery, 2 mi easy

8/27:  12 mi easy

8/28:  6 mi easy, 10 hill sprints

8/29:  10 miles, last 15 min moderate