Tonight's workout

My alarm was set for 6:40/am this morning. I didn't hear it until 6:47/am, at which point I snoozed it, checked the weather, and decided to put my head back down on the pillow. The plan was to run this morning, but I'm growing tired of running in the snow/ice and cold, so now the plan is to run on the treadmill this evening for an easy hour. Afterward, I plan to put in some time strength training. Perhaps I'll even throw in some drills. I've got all night, as Jessica is away in Vermont at a conference.

I'm now hearing from a colleague that a blizzard is being forecasted for early/mid next week. This has the potential to completely screw up my training. I'm not a big fan of running long on the treadmill. Nine the other night was rough. If I'm forced to do that a couple times next week, I'll go crazy. It'd be a different story if my longer, harder runs were leisure runs and I had all day to do them, but they're not and I don't. They need to be good efforts and I have only so much time in the morning to get them done. I like the idea of putting screws in shoes for traction, but I haven't gotten around to that yet. I don't see this working very well in deep snow but maybe on packed snow and ice.

I'm now in the market for new shoes. I think that my feet are tired of the Lunar Trainers. I've got about 800 miles on my second to last pair and have been slowly transitioning to my last pair. I forgot how long it takes to break them in. I look forward to the release of the NB Minimus. In the meantime, I think that I'll ride out the last of the Lunar Trainers.

Finally, to give you an idea of where I've been, where I am, and where I'm going, I share with you my weekly mileage for the past eleven weeks in training for Austin. I note that I've logged 567.2 miles in the those eleven weeks, or 51.56 miles/week. These numbers are slightly skewed due to my missing three days of running last week, but you get the picture--it's the most running I've ever done in my life. I also note a healthy increase in mileage from week to week, with a critical recovery week every fourth week. In terms of structure, this is the way I'd like to train year-round. In terms of mileage, I'd like to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 miles/week by the end of the year. When I'm not training for marathons, I'll deemphasize the 20+ milers and LT and VO2 max running that comes at the end of a cycle. I'll spread out the mileage and perhaps do doubles a couple of times per week.

1) 46.9
2) 49.1 (4.69%)
3) 54.4 (10.79%)
4) 46.4 (-14.71%)
5) 53.4 (15.09%)
6) 54.2 (1.50%)
7) 57.6 (6.27%)
8) 49.2 (-14.58%)
9) 58.9 (19.72%)
10) 63.5 (7.81%)
11) 33.6 (-47.09%)
Avg 51.56 (-1.05%)