Week in Review: 26 June - 2 July . . . Suspiciously Quiet

Thanks to a long 4th of July weekend, this update is a little later than usual (but not so late that I don't remember what happened) . . .

26 June: 15 miles (105 minutes), Canton/Fells/Harbor

27 June: 15 miles (105 minutes), Canton/Fells/Harbor (and, since it was the evening, a little Old Towne Mall thrown in for good measure)

28 June: 4 miles, treadmill hill program (35 minutes), 1608 ft of climb

29 June: 20 miles, part of which consisted of me being the sole participant in Wednesday Night Run from O'Donnell Square (until Arjun showed up partway through), and 2 miles of which were barefoot (at about 10 minute/mile pace). (150 minutes)

30 June: 6 miles at APG, consisting of a half-mile warmup, 35 minutes of treadmill hills (1598 ft of climb), a mile and a half of warmdown (for 50 minutes of total workout time), hot car ride home, then 10 more miles, a lot of which was on Baltimore Street (70 minutes)

1 July: 10 miles, warm morning, returning a library book along the way (70 minutes)

2 July: 13 miles (95 minutes), with a "fast finish" (1.5 miles at ~6:05/mile pace at the end), then 7 more miles (50 minutes) just before midnight, when apparently, according to a passer-by, I change into Urijah Faber

Total Time: 730 minutes

Total Distance: 100 miles

If you want to get really technical about the definition of a week, I completed my 15-mile run on July 3rd earlier than the 15 miles that I ran on 26 June, thereby cramming 115 miles into a 7-day period. But since that's splitting hairs, suffice to say that another 100-mile week is in the can, and I am not unduly worse for wear.

Which brings me to "taper time" . . . When I hopefully start feeling more rested and stronger, and when the positive effects of all of this hard work should become apparent. After taking an easier-than-usual 4th of July (a token 1-mile run to keep the streak alive), I'm already feeling a lot more rested than I have in about a month, which I think is a good sign. If that trend continues, by race day, my legs will be feeling fresh, and I'll be ready to spend a lot (but not too many) hours on a hot road in Death Valley. Overall, I feel much more prepared, and in much better shape, than I was for last year's excursion. Of course, anything can happen on Monday, but with the past year of experience, "anything" stands a good chance of being "better than expected."

Oh, right, and to acknowledge that I sub-titled this post "Suspiciously Quiet" . . . I don't have any particularly deep thoughts to share this week. Not that I haven't been thinking, of course, but unlike previous weeks, I have yet to sense a particular unifying theme within the mental noise. Until that happens, I'll keep quiet, and keep running . . .

Week in Review: 27 March - 2 April

This will be (for once) a relatively short update, as this was sort of a "down" week, in the sense that I didn't run a major race that I could subsequently carry on about for thousands of words. Instead, the (relatively) terse summary of my training:

27 March: 11 miles (77 minutes); the traditional post-race recovery run around Canton/Fells/Inner Harbor.

28 March: 13 miles (91 minutes); attempted to catch the end of the Fed Hill run, but nobody was running back my way, so I detoured uphill through Mt. Vernon and back down dark scary Monument Street.

29 March: 6 miles (42 minutes) as a TNT "warmup" at APG. Another 9 miles (65 minutes) at TNT, including a set of 3x(4x(400 m fast, 200 m jog rest), 400 m jog rest), with 400s in 82, 83, 83, 84, 84, 84, 84, 84, 84, 82, 81, 76 (oops). Based on the last one, maybe should have been running the whole workout less conservatively.

30 March: 10 miles (72 minutes) at APG, including some stupid-silly off-trail steep-grade-in-the-woods running in honor of the upcoming Barkley Marathons, followed up by another 8 miles (58 minutes) with the Wednesday night Canton run crew.

31 March: 8 miles (55 minutes) on a run around Harford Community College that started like garbage but ended up fast.

1 April: More garbage? Split run, 7 miles (50 minutes) in the rainy, ambivalent morning gray in Fells, then 10 more miles (70 minutes) on a similar route in the evening, when it was slightly warmer and brighter. A few intermittent fast sections in there.

2 April: Long(ish) 120 minutes (conservatively, 16 miles) at Loch Raven, on trails. This was uncharacteristically beautiful and fun, in spite of the gray, spitting rain.

Total time: 700 minutes (exactly)
Total distance: 98 (inexactly)

I was not keeping very close track of my mileage during the week, but I felt like I was running a lot of miles. And now that I've actually bothered to add it up, apparently I was, coming very close to that magical 100-mile week mark.

So maybe some meditations on the 100-mile week are in order. On the one hand, when I stop to think about it (which I try not to do), it seems like an awful lot of running. On the other hand, when it comes time to actually do my run, once I get over the fear that this might be the run where I crash, it feels entirely natural to be in motion for an hour, or an hour and a half, or however long my run is supposed to be. And especially since this past Wednesday, running has felt very, very pleasant, normal, and even a little euphoric towards the end of each session. Maybe that's the magic of the 100-mile week - it's the threshold at which one more mile becomes more pleasure than pain. Or maybe it's just me.

Another thing about a 100-mile week is that it gives you a lot of time by yourself, with your thoughts (so hopefully they're not stupid and boring). I could also use this space to carry on about the thoughts I've had while running this past week, but it's getting late, and there's more running that needs to happen tomorrow, so, for now, I'll keep them to myself. But if one of them keeps on catching my fancy, I may just drop some science on that in a day or two. Until then, I'll keep on riding this wave and continue to hope that it never crashes.