Three Days In A Row

At the beginning of this year, one of my fears of marathon training was getting injured by overtraining.  Since I started running on the "older" side (I ran my first 10K when I was 31 and became an "every week runner" at 34), I rarely ran on consecutive days as I wanted to give my body a chance to recover.

I found very few marathon training plans that allowed for only training 3 days a week.  I chose a plan with planned runs on 4 days per week, so I had to increase the frequency of my training and it forced me to run on consecutive days at least once a week.  Luckily, my body adjusted quite well.

Looking at my schedule this week, I had a problem.  I am going to Hershey Park with the family on Monday, so I will not be able to get my training run in (unless I get to the track at 5am...and since driving 2.5 hours each way and walking around an amusement park for 8 hours is going to take a lot out of me, I don't think I need to add a track workout at 5am!).  I had considered pushing it out a day, since up until now Tuesday has been a rest day - but lo and behold, Tuesday is NOT a rest day this week, but a 70+ min long run.

If I wanted to hit all of the workouts this week, I was going to have to run on three consecutive days - either by pulling in Monday's 10 x 400m speedwork into today (I ran my mile Time Trial on Friday and a 9 mile long run on Saturday morning), or by pushing both the Monday and Tuesday workouts out a day and running Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

I decided to run Monday's workout this afternoon.  Since it was a bit humid outside at 4pm (we had brunch plans and I had to wait until I had digested), I went to the gym to run on the treadmill.  The newer treadmills have a "Speed Interval" setting - just perfect for an interval workout.  I set the jog/recovery speed for 5.2 mph (around an 11:30/mile pace) and the run/interval speed for 7.5 mph (8:00/mile pace).  I felt pretty comfortable running all 10 intervals at this pace.  I was ready to stop after the 8th interval, but added the last two to complete the workout.

All in all it was 5 miles in 48:33.  I've only run one 5 mile race - in February of 2006 - and my time that day was 47:40.  I'm pretty sure that I could beat that now given my performance during today's workout.  Not that I'm looking to go out and run a 5 mile race any time soon...

Today's run put me at just under 27 miles for the week.  I had missed one workout due to fighting a cold, but I made up for it with today's workout.