The week in training (3)

July 10th-17th

The first week of the build phase of training sees something new for me

Monday  S & C again. I’m starting to look forward to these workouts.

The High School track. It has seen better days.

Tuesday  Something new. A track session. In 20 years of marathon running I've never done a structured track workout before. A one mile jog to the track, 8 x 400m with 60 seconds rest between laps. Followed by another mile jog home. The laps of the track were very hard work indeed. The high school track coach was setting up for the track team workout when I was there. I checked with him that I wasn’t interfering with his plans and shot the breeze for a while. Super nice guy.

What my workout looked like on Google Earth

Wednesday. A welcome rest day.

The Hill

Thursday. Structured Hills workout. I’ve done hill workouts before, but only in the sense that I run around hilly towns like Waconia, MN. My plan called for a gradual hill this week, and as there are only two hills around town, (with Prairie in my home towns name you can expect it to be flat hereabouts.) I picked the one on the quieter road. I ran up and down that hill 16 times. 

Google Earth view of the workout

Friday. Been a tough week this week so I get a second rest day.

Saturday As they were short of volunteers, I decided to help out rather than run at parkrun.  After I came home from running a few errands I completed my 5.5 miles easy run. The air quality wasn’t the best. But there has been far, far worse.

Sunday 10 miles race pace-ish. We’re still having a lot of problems hereabouts with smoke from Canadian wildfires. The air quality was “moderate” when I went out at about 7:15, but I could most definitely see a haze out there as I ran. I’m not sure if it affected me, as I slowed for a few miles towards the end, but I still got around in my required pace.

Week one of the “build” phase of the training plan in the books.