Wednesday, March 26, 2008

A daily double and the mini-taper begins

I've had plenty of times when I've run some miles in the evening, then 12 hours later, in the early morning, I'll do a big run. Actually, I did that this week with a 6 miler on Monday night and a 12 mile with LTs at 5 a.m. the next morning, less than half a day apart. I very rarely follow a run in the morning with good distance in the evening after a day of work. Today was a different story.

I ran my recovery 5 miles this morning at around 5:30. It rained and snowed last night, actually, it first snowed then rained. In any case, the rain froze leaving some icy patches. I got to one area in my waterfront trail and promptly fell on my butt but not before my arms went out. Luckily, I was actually not running but rather walking through the ice so I was kinda prepared.

Total run was done in a very recovery speed of 9 minute miles or 5 miles in 45:20.

After work, I saw how nice and sunny it was. It was maybe plus 5C. So I looked at the schedule, saw that I only had a 12 miler scheduled for tomorrow, saw that I had a dinner with friends tomorrow after visiting my mom, and saw an opportunity to get my run in now, and thus beginning the mini-taper a day early.

Yep, so I did my 12 miler medium-long run this evening while the sun was out. I made sure to keep it relatively easy, so I took out my heart-rate monitor and ran under 150 beats per minute. I'm fairly pleased with a results. I averaged 8:13 miles with a heart rate of 148 bpm. Looking back, this type of heart rate with that pace shows I'm in pretty good fitness (for me). Total run of 12 miles in 1:38:44.

So pretty crazy huh? I did 17 miles on a weekday and 35 miles over three days and now I get a luxurious three days of rest before the 30K race. Actually, I will do maybe two miles on Saturday to warm up and get some striders in, but hey, two miles are nothing. I'm loving the idea that I can finally sleep in (if 5:45 a.m. to 6 a.m. wakeups qualify as sleeping in).

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