1 Down, 17 to Go

In case you were wondering, 1/18th is about 5.6%. That puts in pretty good perspective. I always chuckle when I hear someone refer to something like the baseball season being a marathon. So is marathon training the real marathon? I understand the analogy, but the baseball season or things of that ilk are much more forgiving the a marathon. If you don't feel 100% on the day of the marathon, you're pretty much screwed. It's very unusual to be able to suddenly turn things on if things aren't going your way for the first 10 or 15 miles of a marathon. If you don't feel 100% on game day in baseball, you still can piece things together and if things don't work out, you still have 161 other games spread across 6 months.

I ended up finishing week 1 with 55 miles, a new career high in a calendar week for me. I took Thursday off and ran the following on Friday, Saturday and Sunday:
Fri- 9.3Miles, 8:07 pace, 150 AHR
Sat- 5.02 Recovery Miles, 9:44 pace, 129 AHR
Sun- 15.4 Miles, 8:14 pace, 152 AHR

I feel great with how things went last week. My calves are a little tight, but that is more likely attributed to my lack of stretching. I am making much more of an effort to stretch more and have added in some core work a few nights a week as well. I think of how I felt after I peaked at 54 miles last year and I was beat up. There's definitely something to these recovery runs and training smarter. I know there's plenty of time to feel otherwise, but the base-building in the months leading up to training seem to have made a great impact as well.

Here's the week ahead:

• Monday - 5 Recovery
• Tuesday - 8 General Aerobic Miles with 10 x 100m strides
• Wednesday - 12 Miles
• Thursday - Rest/XC
• Friday - 9 General Aerobic Miles
• Saturday - 5 Recovery
• Sunday - 16 Miles, with the second 8 miles at goal marathon pace.
  
• 55 Miles total
  

I am not sure if running 8 miles at GMP right now is either a good idea or doable at this point, so I am going to do it as close to that as I can as long as I keep my heart range in the area it is supposed to be in.