Technical Difficulties

Not with my running. No, there have been some issues with blogger up here in Ontario for the past few days. They must have sorted things out, because I'm back on my blog and posting again. For almost a week, I couldn't access any blogger-based blogs, which forced me away from my laptop to find things to do! Imagine!

The new training program has been going well. My legs haven't felt as fresh as they have before, but I think that's understandable, considering I jumped right back into training a week after running Chicago. I'm crazy huh. I logged 36 miles last week and have logged 17 so far this week in what will be a 39-mile period.

That will be the most miles I've ever run in a week, topping the 38 I logged a few weeks before the last marathon. But I'm gradually building up to being able to do 36-56 miles per week now. In the previous training plan, I was logging between 18-38 -- mostly staying around 25-30 per week. I've done that long enough where I can safely add more miles and not kill myself.

Yesterday, I did an 8-mile speed workout, mixing in four Yasso 800s. It's a training program created by Bart Yasso. Basically, you run 800s (half mile) at a pace you want to run the marathon in. So, if I want to aim for 3 hours, 30 minutes, I would run 3 minute, 30 second 800s, with a 3 minute, 30 second rest period between each 800.

I felt really good after doing 4 of those -- that's how many you're supposed to start with the week you begin doing them -- so I ran 5 more speed interval miles. So my speed workout looked like this:

1 miles warmup: 7:44
Yasso 800s: 3:21 (3:38 rest)/3:24 (3:40 rest)/3:26 (3:31 rest)/3:24 (3:30 rest)
5 mile intervals: 9:41/6:47/11:20/6:39/10:28

I'm down to do an 8-mile "easy" run today and then a 14-mile long run on Sunday. I'll be teaming up with the guy I met at the Toronto marathon, Kevin, for the long run. We ran 12 together this past Sunday and he showed me a nice running path that I didn't know about before. He's a tad faster than I, so it helped me push through the whole distance without slacking.

It's been really cold and windy up here of late. I headed out and bought some winter gear -- tights for my legs that I can wear under windbreaker-like jogging pants that I bought, and also a pair of running gloves. I have a long sleeve technical nike shirt and a pullover from the Chicago marathon.

So, s far, I've been able to keep running outside. We'll see how long I can keep it up. I don't want to have to do long runs indoors. Ugh. The cold I can deal with, but it gets reeeaaallly windy here right by the lake. At least this new path Kev showed me runs north and south, so you don't have to deal with as much wind as you do when running along the lake.

That's all for now. Good luck to everyone running the NYC Marathon this week! I hope to be in that crowd next November.