Blog Master G

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A Banner 7-Day Workout Week

Sunday, March 21st, 2010 · 2 Comments

As I wrote about back in January, this year to date I’ve been taking it somewhat easy, not logging too many big miles and focusing more on speed work and faster 6- to 8-mile runs, making more of an effort to run once or twice a week with my running club, the Saratoga Stryders. Running with faster people makes you faster.

In 2010 to date, I’ve gone for 47 runs, which includes 3 races and 2 snowshoe runs. I’ve run 59% of the 80 days in 2010, averaging 5.89 miles per run and 22.92 miles per week.

I’ve also gone swimming 15 times this year (once or twice a week), averaging 0.52 miles each time (about 20 laps or 1,000 yards each time I go), to help improve my cardio. It’s made a big difference in bettering my ability to sustain faster paces with a lower heart rate.

I’m not sure what got into me this week — maybe it’s the awesome spring weather — but I just completed an entire 7 days of working out, which could be a record. I ran 5 days and swam 2 days, and I feel pretty great.

This morning’s run (with Charles) was also the longest I’ve done since my last marathon in October — 13.15 miles at the Saratoga Battlefield, a beautiful place to run — rolling hills, grazing deer (one of which I hypnotized with my bright fluorescent green running jacket), and miles of peaceful trails with nary a car in sight.

The elevation / heart rate chart for this morning’s run:

snag-2359

The run also brought my weekly running total to a year’s best 45.04 miles, adding nearly 20 miles to last week’s 26 and c0mpletely disregarding the rule of thumb to only increase weekly mileage by 10% at a time.

I’ve always been impressed by A Marathoner’s weekly run recaps (along with his daily running analyses), so here’s my version of the same for the past week:

Day Date Type Miles Time Pace Avg. HR
Monday 3/15/2010 run 10.01 78:59:00 7:53 150
Tuesday 3/16/2010 swim 0.568 25:00:00
Wednesday 3/17/2010 run 6.17 51:20:00 8:19 145
Thursday 3/18/2010 run 7.49 59:59:00 8:00 148
Friday 3/19/2010 swim 0.568 25:00:00
Saturday 3/20/2010 run 2.4 26:46:00 11:09 115
Saturday 3/20/2010 run 5.82* 46:21:00 7:57 147
Sunday 3/21/2010 run 13.15 107:32:00 8:10 144
TOTAL: 46.176 7:00:57 8:35 141.5

* The 5.82-miler on Saturday included my fourth and final week of spring Fartlek training, as suggested by Greg McMillan in this article: Performance Page: The Lost Art of Fartlek. I did a 5-minute surge at 80% effort, followed by a 2-minute recovery jog. Then a 4-minute surge at 85% effort, and so on (3, 2, and 1). The 1-minute surge was at close to 100% effort, which was fun and really tough. Oh, and Monday’s run also included Week 3 of the Fartleks (yeah, I compressed two speed workouts into one week, which also isn’t ideal).

Tags: running

2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 bro bro // Mar 23, 2010 at 1:28 pm

    dude! take it easy. save some miles for the rest of us.

  • 2 Blog Master G // Mar 23, 2010 at 2:32 pm

    ha! i’m on a tear. 2 for 2 this week so far, too (run, swim)! \m/