Success, Friends, and Adjustments

Woohoo! Another successful training block! I've somehow managed to sustain 6 weeks of 50+ miles per week, feeling great. Some all-important stats from the past few months:

• MPW peak: 57.8
• Average MPW over last 6 weeks: 54
• Peak long run: 19 miles
• 5 long runs >= 16 miles
• 2 long runs >= 18 miles

Easing into intensity

I never realized how good 9:00-10:00 min/mile paces were for the body; those miles have worked wonders for me. Base building has been SO important to me as a runner and I feel stronger and more durable than I ever have before. However, despite my original plans as stated last month, I am choosing to move out of this phase. It felt like I was either getting bored or reaching a plateau... plus, I felt that in order to continually improve at low heart rate paces, I needed to increase my volume significantly from 8h30m per week to maybe 10h-11h per week. I wasn't sure I'd have that kind of time to commit, at least not for my first go at the marathon distance.

Of course, I'll need to re-assess as the weeks go by to see how my body responds to the new stimulus but hopefully the preparation will have been adequate! :)

So... last week was the first week I went under 50 miles per week (mpw) as I opted to soften my move into higher intensity training with a little extra cycling. With friends, cycling is BY FAR MY FAVORITE CROSS-TRAINING ACTIVITY. I wish I had the time and endurance to do more of it....

Hillzzz

My next training block of 4 weeks will be focused on adding hill workouts and 1 tempo type workout per week. My focus is building up leg strength for hill-climbing, maintaining endurance with long runs and mid-long runs, easing into better stamina with the tempo runs, and preventing injury by lots of icing, foam rolling, and tiger balming.

• Tempo Run: Right now, my guestimate for tempo pace is about 7:30-7:40/mile on the track and 7:40-7:45/mile on the (flat) roads. 
• Calculated from recent 5K pace (7:19)+20-25'' = 7:39-7:44
• Hills
• San Bruno: sustained hill workouts at high aerobic effort: 2.0mi uphill, active rest, 1.1 mi steep uphill, active rest, 1.1mi steep uphill at goal race effort
• week 1 and 4 (may forego week 4 to do the ninja loop run as my long run that week)
• Twin Peaks hill repeats: hard effort hill repeats on this circuit
• week 2 and 3
• Adding intensity to weekly long runs (on hills ONLY), everything else relaxed and slow.

A few notes on training intensities

• First 20 minute tempo run was done today at 7:30 min/mile pace. Felt goooood @ an average HR of 169 bpm. Comfortably hard is now my favorite workout type! :D
• I learned that, for some reason, my perceived exertion in running goes from "hard" to "easy" very easily. I have no metric for "moderate," which is why HR training has been so important. My HR<154 training paces have felt easy, but if I'm being brutally honest with myself, some of those days, especially the day after a 1h30m run... were actually "moderate." 
• I've also noticed that it takes me a good while to warm-up now. I used to bounce out fast right out of the gate and now I sometimes don't feel warmed up until about half an hour into a run. Interestingly, it feels like I need my warm-up to feel like the run is going well. Hopefully it's a sign that my leg muscles are changing at the cellular level. I mean, I really miss sprinter legs, but my hybrid endurance legs are pretty shweet too. And I still get to keep my glutes and calves. :P