No injuries this training cycle = success!

Wow! It's been one heck of a training cycle before the Berkeley Half.

I haven't been very race-specific given that I've treated this race as more of a springboard and baseline measurement for my marathon training. But this is certainly the first time I've trained consistently before a race (even if it's just been 4-5 weeks). And that is something to be proud of.

Naturally, I have high hopes for the Berkeley Half. But I'm nervous because I spent the majority of my training at low heart rates. I actually planned to experiment with 4 weeks of training at low heart rate exclusively. However, I figured that since I was injury free at my peak week of 33 miles, I might try a few tune-up workouts with a little speedplay at HM goal pace.

Quick summary of my weekly miles:

Planned mileage for the next 2 weeks are denoted by a lighter color and mileage range. 

As you can see, I dismissed the 10% rule... with reckless abandon AND this doesn't even reflect all of the cross-training I've done on my road bike (hint: it's a ridiculous amount of hours given how busy I am...). I've had four quality long runs and four consecutive weeks of 20+ mpw.... It's a miracle I'm not injured!! (*knock on wood*)

Lack of injury tells me that I'm doing something right by pegging the great majority of my runs as easy runs. And by easy, I mean truly easy (HR<154bpm, ideally <150bpm) @ 9:40-10:00/mile on the flats and even slower on hills. About 50% of my runs in October were fasted morning runs at this low intensity with the intent of training my body to efficiently use fat as a fuel source. This is my spin on the Maffetone Method.

... we shall see in two weeks if I can squeak out a sub-1:45 HM, a longstanding goal of mine. It's completely possible I'm not there yet, especially with respect to the hills.... but it's also possible that I am there! I've just got to trust my training and have fun!

Taper weeks commence! See you soon, Berkeley!

Oh, P.S. I think one thing that has really helped is logging my runs on Strava (see my training log here). It's almost unhealthy how obsessed I've been with the stats (mostly just building mileage). The old me (before I started taking marathon training seriously) would be worried that my followers will think I'm a slowpoke because I'm doing all these easy runs. But low heart training has no ego - and it will be the race results that really count.