Week Three of 10 Mile Training

Last week was a GOOD week. (Well, beside sweating out every last drop of bodily fluids on Monday.) A "normal" week of running for me is 22-24 miles, and I ran 26.69 miles last week because of a longer-than-normal hard run on Friday:

- MONDAY was that hot and sweaty run where I lost a lot of weight, and some good leg exercises.

- TUESDAY was a long swim and nice upper body. It was also the first day of school for my boys:

- WEDNESDAY was an easy run (one of just a FEW in the last 4 weeks), some good core and legs, and a bike ride to-and-from some meetings at the University.

- THURSDAY was a 36 mile ride with the first 25 at tempo pace. I was at 20.6 mph after 25 miles - nothing great, but just a nice push. I finished the entire 36 mile ride with a 20.1 mph average.

- FRIDAY was a more brutal speed day: 8x (3 mins hard / 3 mins easy). That SOUNDS easy, but it's NOT. I did an out-and-back, and here you can see the last 4 efforts in red heading back home:

I also did good legs and core on Friday.

- SATURDAY was good upper body and a long-ish ride. The ride was 4x5 mile efforts just on a normal route (so it wasn't optimized for speed necessarily). My first one was decently fast, #2 was a lot of uphill so it was slow, #3 was still mostly uphill and into the wind, and then #4 was with the wind and fast:

#1: 21.8 mph, 13:46
#2: 19.7 mph, 15:13
#3: 20.6 mph, 14:32
#4: 23.4 mph, 12:47

- SUNDAY was just some core.

And my running is still going strong compared to 2010! My hot Monday run was just a BIT slower than 14 years ago, and that was easily blamed on the weather. (I ran 10 min efforts in 2010 covering 1.69 and 1.70 miles, and last week I covered 1.66 and 1.69 miles, so not far off.)

And my fartlek efforts on Friday were faster than 14 years ago! I was shocked at that, as I figured that workout would "put me in my place." In the 2 halfs of the workout in 2010, I ran 3.65 and 3.58 miles. Last week, I ran 3.77 and 3.81 miles. That's 0.12 miles farther in the first half, and 0.23 miles farther in the last half! I was NOT expecting to keep my 2010 pace for as many workouts as I am... I'm starting to wonder if I could have a better than expected 10 mile! TBD I guess!!