Just my luck. The heatwave that started the day before the 4th of July (aka the 3rd of July) followed me from Allston and into New Hampshire. It was HOT the first couple days of the week. I mention this despite the fact that most of New England knows it's hot, and the rest of the country, knowing that it's July, can probably guess that it's HOT. Regardless of the redundancy, it was REALLY HOT, and you can tell how serious I am because there are capital letters.
Anyway, here are the great secrets of what I got up to in New Hampshire:
Monday July 5th: AM- Travel to Derry. PM-Out and back, 8mi easy. Heat index over 90 at 8PM.
Tuesday July 6th: 8PM- Still 90 degrees at 8. . . 12mi over a hilly course, pretty easy. Upset stomach.
Wednesday July 7th: 12PM- 5mi easy. Guess what the weather was like? 6:30PM- 8mi easy with Peter Najem, a guy I ran with in high school and for my first two years at Keene. He's joining up with this post-collegiate group in Syracuse, so congratulations and good luck to him!
Thursday July 8th: 1PM- 5mi easy, I think this was my new record for sleeping in. 12:30? Damn! 8PM- 2mi up, 6x(4min hard, 2min easy), 2miles down. 10mi in 63:00, 5:40 avg for the fartlek. Did this run on a hilly 3mi loop located two miles from my house. Generally, I prefer to warm up longer, but I forgot I was doing a longer fartlek today and cut my normal warmup in half to keep today from being an 18-19 mi day. A little cooler today, but hot enough to keep my "2min easy" segments very slow instead of their normal ~6:00 pace. Still, worked pretty hard and had a good workout- despite dragging ass through my two-mile warmup in near 16min!
Friday July 9th: 12:30pm- 5mi easy, much nicer weather today. 6:30PM- 8mi easy with Najem again, over a hilly course. ~6:20s or so for most of the back half.
Saturday July 10th: 7:30PM- Barn run! 4mi easy, 4mi moderate, 4mi hard over the hilliest course I could make up around Beaver Lake. Last 4mi avg 5:37s over some monster hills, great run. 75 deg and mist for this run!
Sunday July 11th: 1PM- 30min easy on the Kancamangus Highway. Two friends and I drove up north to screw around on the Swift River. We hiked upstream, fell a bunch of times on rocks, rode the river downstream, smashed our butts on more rocks, I went running, we had lunch, I took a nap on a big sunny rock in the middle of the river, we tried to build a dam across the river, then it started downpouring and thunderstorming, we we left. 8PM- I wandered around town nice and easy for ~65 minutes.
Total- 86 miles, no strides, drills, or strength. I know, I know. Next week I'm doing the Blessing of the Fleet 10miler!
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sounds like things are smooth. i ran beside the swift river on the old railroad bed on saturday. nice relief!
ReplyDeleteactually, i was on the trail next to east branch of the pemigewasset at lincoln woods not on the swift river. nevertheless, it was great!
ReplyDeleteI woke up today COVERED in bruises from our trips downstream, but it was totally worth it! We all observed that it really is like being in a different state up there- Derry and its environs is like Mass Lite.
ReplyDeleteHow do you come up with what workout to do?
ReplyDeleteThis year, my coach, Bruce Lehane, gave me a "sample" two-week cycle to use as a template- the sequence basically goes "fartlek, progression run, tempo, tempo, hills" with recovery days and aerobic runs in between as necessary.
ReplyDeleteIn the past, I've been left more or less to my own devices. Generally speaking, I just make stuff up on my warmup. "Hm, maybe today I'll start hammering on Lane Rd, then work the hills on Floyd, then tempo home," or "ok, I'll run to such-and-such hill and do ten reps."
If you're going to do a fartlek, it doesn't really matter if you do 5x4min or 4x5min or 8x3min or 12x2min. Generally, you keep things aerobic, you keep things fun, and you don't sweat things too much.
If Bruce's schedule calls for me to do a 5mi tempo on a Wednesday, but I work a double shift on Wednesday and can only run at noon when its 105 out, I just do the workout Thursday. Bruce, above anything, urges common sense with stuff like that. I think that's the most sensible way to approach it. Summer training should be fun, not a drag.
This reminds me of my favorite Lydiard quote. Some American coach kept asking him how his runners deal with the pain of training. Lydiard scoffed, "My runners didn't run through pain barriers! My runners had fun!"