Sunday to Sunday 90

The advantage of doing back to back weekend long runs is that you can squeeze lots of miles into a week without actually realizing or meaning it! By the time I had jogged home happy with my Sunday workout I worked out that from the previous Sunday I had notched 90 miles, including 2 20 milers and 2 workouts.

Following the Tuesday workout, Wednesday was a recovery day before Thursday's planned 20. Thursday I typically meet up with the Dowd crew for a 9 mile loop that is always good fun and good company, so I decided to incorporate this run into that time. I went to bed at the same time as the kids and forced myself out of bed at 4 for a 4:35 start from the Dowd. After 3 solo miles I looped back to the Dowd for the arrival of my first support crew- Jason, Danielle and Dalena. At 5:30 we circled back again and picked up Shenna and at 6:00 we came back again to meet up with the main crew. I had time to change into some dry clothes and take in a gu before heading out for the last phase of my run. It was a nice and relatively easy way to get over 2.5 hours of work in and worked out so nicely that I'm planning the same deal for my 20 miler this week.

I asked Coach the reasoning behind setting me three 20 milers in successive weeks when I wasn't training for a marathon and was advised that as long as I ran them nice and easy and didn't try to kill myself completing any of them they would be invaluable elements of my training mix for the Half build up. A point I was able to pick up on in the latest Running Times issue
where in an article about Peter Snell it talks about Lydiard's theory of the longer slower runs being a key promoter of fast twitch muscle fiber recruitment. Good stuff!

Friday and Saturday saw another couple of easy days before my next workout on Sunday which was 4 miles, 2 miles, 1 mile, 1 mile all with half mile jog recovery which I completed on the trails of Mcalpine before finishing off at the track. I ran 23:14, 10:49, 5:14 and 5:06 which was pretty much as prescribed although Coach did want me to try and dip under 5 minutes for the final mile, a feat which proved elusive. Regardless it had been another good workout and the culmination of my second successive 70 mile week.