Nifty Fifty

The plus side of having the week off from work, plenty of time to exercise. I treated this a lot like the old "training camps" in college. I ran 10 miles each day for the past 5 days. It's an unusual way to get 50 miles, but it works. Normally, to get that sort of mileage, I would add a longer run during the week. I'm hoping to do a little bit more tomorrow, but the past couple runs have been a bit of a struggle. Today was as close to 10 miles at 8 min/mile as I've ever run. Trying to balance the additional miles with not getting injured. I'd gladly pass up some miles to avoid a week or two of no running.

To the 'non-runner', this kind of mileage means marathon training. I'm still waiting for the warmer weather to start throwing in some speed work and then I'll pick a few 5k/5M races to see how well the winter training program worked.

Downhill running

Each of my three Boston marathons had the same physical result for me, sore quads. In general, this is due to the pounding of all the downhills on the course. I've vowed that before I run Boston again, I would try to acclimate my body to downhill running. Of course, since I don't plan on running Boston this year, I haven't done anything toward that goal.

What I did do is run a course that seems to cause the same (but lesser) pain on Saturday. A relatively simple 10.75 mile run left me cringing as I walked down the stairs for the next day and half. It didn't bother my regular activity and didn't stop me from putting in an easy 6.5 mile run on the treadmill. I'm still sore, but hope that some additional rest and additional miles that are on schedule for this week (work shutdown) will clear out whatever's left in the quads.

Enjoy yet another snow day.