SLOultrarunner: CIM 2012: Week #10

Monday - Yoga
Tuesday - Power
Wednesday - Pilates / Speedwork (7.05 miles)
Thursday - Rest
Friday - Hills 5x (5.84 miles)
Saturday - Tempo (11.91 miles)
Sunday - Long Run (14.74 miles)
Total Mileage for Week = 39.54 miles

Week #10 marks the beginning of the second half of my training. I can feel this is going to go by so quickly and before I know it, race day will be upon me. The first half of my training went well. I can feel that the incorporation of the yoga, pilates and the power classes boosted my overall strength. With the gym closing in the last week of September, that was the wrench that put a crinkle in my plans. However, I'm not going to dwell on it. I have moved on and adapted to the change. It's just one of those things life throws at us. It's up to us to go with it and find the positive in it. We can't let something like that ruin the plan, right? As runners we have to be tough and keep on going.

Monday -Yoga
Somehow, I tweaked my neck/shoulder region by doing the 'up-dog' from my yoga video. It hurts to raise my arms above my head to do down-dog, overhead presses or do triceps dips. I have to be careful with Yoga now. I didn't realize that as gentle as it is, I can still hurt myself. So, I will probably take a week break from doing the x-training next week to let this heal a bit.

Wednesday - 6x Yassos (3:33/3:37/3:38/3:41/3:44/3:42)
Coach Nancy announced that every other Wednesday from here to December will be devoted to Yasso 800s. This will help tremendously for those doing marathons this fall, especially me. I love Yassos. This is the kind of workout that may predict my marathon time. The goal is to be able to run ten 800s, each in a minute-and-second time that matches your expected hour-and-minute marathon time. So, if you want to run a marathon in 4 hours and 15 minutes, you start with four or five 800-meter repeats and gradually work up to 10, running each in 4 minutes and 15 seconds.
The recovery time has to also match the goal minutes and seconds as in 4:15.
This is our first Yasso workout for this training and it went above and beyond my expectations. Before we got started, I had it drilled in my head that I would be happy with a 3:48 and ecstatic with a 3:45 if I can even achieve it. Well, to my surprise, slowest one was the 2nd to the last one (never fails, it always is that third lap) with a 3:44. I felt comfortable with each one of them. Of course it would have been even sweeter if I had the repeats reversed: where the slowest ones were in the front and the fastest laps at the end. That's what I'll strive for next time.

Friday - Hill Repeats 5x (7:35/8:06/7:49/7:35/7:59)
I took a full day of rest on Thursday to prepare for Friday night's 5x hill repeats. This was to be my second to the last hill repeat before CIM. I went used my trusted Bay Oaks Hill and it was another great effort night. I started with 2 mile warm up and performed my stretches along with lunge matrix stretching I learned from Coach Jay Johnson. After this, I ran my repeats and cooled down with a 2 mile run home. I did a silly little experiment on the side here. As you can tell from second repeat, my pace was off. That was due to the fact that instead of walking down the hill for the recovery, I jogged down slashing the recovery time to half. I was not ready to go for the next repeat but I ran it anyway. The results were telling. For this kind of workout, a full recovery is a must. I knew that, but I just wanted to see how much it would affect my performance. So the next few repeats, I rested and recovered until I was ready. Now I know.

Saturday Pace (8:51)
I was a little worried that my legs would be too tired for a pace run effort today. I only had 7 miles to run at pace plus 5 miles of warm up and cool down. It turned out all right. I was right on pace and everything went as planned.

Sunday Trail Run - (Long Slow Distance 11:54 pace)
I ran with two friends who are also signed up for the Cal Int'l Marathon in December. This was also their recovery week, so we decided to run together along the Bluffs trail and Point Buchon in Montana De Oro State Park. It was a beautiful and clear day. The Pacific Ocean had its beautiful hues of blue green and all shades of blue in between. Our run was truly a recovery run. I expected my legs to be particularly fatigue from yesterday's pace effort but I was okay. I would have been in trouble if we pushed the pace, thankfully, we adhered to our goal today. Another good week: until next time, happy running.