Training Update, Recovery and Such

With four weeks having passed since the marathon I thought it would be good to talk about my current level of training. I decided to take some of the pressure off by saying that I won't race until at least six weeks have passed. With that in mind, next week will be my first attempt at a workout (by that I mean interval related training). I want to take things slowly to avoid A) getting injured, & B) getting fried. So far I think I have played it well, but I wish I felt better. Below is what things have looked like since the Marathon....

5/25 - 5/31 ( 37.7 Miles)
Sunday was the marathon, so I had a great 26.2 on the board early. I had a little bit of trouble walking the next two days, so I decided to take them off. With my first day back in DC, I decided another one wouldn't hurt either. All in all I took three days off after the marathon. I decided to give running a shot on Thursday evening, with an easy 3 mile shake out run. I was nervous, as I hadn't felt well since the marathon. My eating was off, legs were sore, and I was falling asleep at 10pm each night. Surprisingly, I felt ok on the run, and did the same thing the next day. On Saturday I ran an east 5.5 with Em to finish off my first week of recovery.
(S-26.2, M-0, T-0, W-0, Th-3, F-3, S-5.5)

6/1 - 6/7 (27.5 Miles)
This was actually a better week in terms of daily mileage. Take away the marathon from last week and I am left with 11.5 miles. I stuck with the 5-6 mile range for this week choosing not to force the issue. At times I felt good out there, at other times I felt heavy and un-able to get moving. I knew eventually things would turn around, but this was a weird week. On one of the days off I decided to play some basketball and ran into AU coach Matt Centrowitz at the gym. There is a future post coming about this encounter, but I will say it was "interesting." Alyssa was in town that week so I did a couple of runs with her, the best being the 6 on Monday.
(S-5.5, M-6, T-5.5, W-0, Th-5.5, F-0, S-5)

6/8 - 6/14 (56.5 Miles)
Back to business, well sort of. The difference this week was that I didn't take a day off. Also I started to upgrade my daily mileage a little bit. I made a commitment to try and do away with the 5 milers and infuse some 8 milers. On the Wednesday of this week I got dragged out for a 12 miler with Steve Crane and Robbie Wade of the Pacers group down here. This was about 3 miles more than I had planned to run, but I figured "why not?" I did pretty well, I only started feeling tired at about 10-11 miles, and even then I was fine. The pace was probably at a 6:35-45 clip most of the way, but I am in shape, so it was no big deal. Other than the 12, not too much to report on the week. Solid all around though.
(S-8, M-8, T-6, W-12, Th-6, F-8, S-8.5)

6/15 - 6/21 (55 Miles)
Another solid week, however this week I had a day off. I wanted to upgrade things again, with a goal of getting my daily training runs back to about 10 miles. I sort of succeeded this week, but I ran into a little trouble. For the last couple of weeks I have been working up at AU (for their HS students program), and this week the kids actually arrived. My hours through Wednesday were at 43, a schedule I had not seen since my days at Summer Bridge Manchester. So, my day off came on Monday, day 1 of the program. I worked from 8 am to about 11:30pm (this after staying up till midnight on Sunday for the Celtics), at times just babysitting, but mostly running around. (On a side note this job has me in a new place, doing much more administrative stuff, but it's cool I still get to do programming in the evening). My "work" days off were on Thursday and Friday, so on Thursday I mixed in a 3 mile tempo run (16:27 [5:25, 5:31, 5:31]) to begin the process of waking up my legs. The goal is to work out a little next week, so this mini-tempo was a good start. Friday's 10 was a good run, as I had the "fast" feeling again. Instead of pushing it the last few miles I pulled off the gas and jogged home. If I am going to get through a long run on Sunday I have to be intelligent.
(S-10, M-0, T-10, W-8, Th-9, F-10, S-8)