I’ve signed up for the Glass City Marathon in Toledo, Ohio, and I’m on week 13 of 18 in my slightly modified Pfitz 18/55 plan. The marathon is on April 28, 2019. I’m in the race prep phase. This phase has a lot more speed workouts.
Monday: 8 w/5 * 600m @ 5k pace. It was rainy in the morning and had an appointment to take the wife’s brand new van in for service in the morning, so I held of running until the afternoon. It was drizzling and chilly, but not too bad. I found that my suspicion on my day the watch crashed was correct – the workout is incorrect in Garmin Connect. The target for these was 6:55 – 7:15 min/mile, the sets were 6:41, 7:03, 7:07, 6:55, and 6:52. I’m pretty pleased with those, of course. Overall, 8.06 miles in 1:04:50 (8:03 min/mile).
Tuesday: 11 miles. Oy Vey. The van has to go back again for a sensor replacement. So my run shifted to lunch, with no actual complaints because it was 10 degrees warmer at lunch time (27 in the morning, 37 or so at lunch, raising to the mid-40s very quickly). Ran in East Fork at a pretty fast pace. 11.03 in 1:33:07 (8:27 min/mile).
Wednesday: 4 miles + 6 x 100m strides. After thinking this would have do tomorrow’s 12 miles today and today’s 4+ tomorrow, I happily was able to “rest” after yesterday’s 11. Or so I thought. I got out at lunch in some beautiful weather and ran a little fast. After seeing the overall pace on my watch, I thought “maybe it was because of the strides”. Nope. 5.02 in 40:23 (8:03 min/mile pace). Before the strides it was an 8:11 min/mile pace, so the strides had only a slight effect.
Thursday: 12 miles. Ran around the park and the adjoining subdivision and crossed the dirt path to get to the other part of the subdivision. Somehow, I made this one pretty fast, although it wasn’t as fast as it should have been (courtesy of going too fast yesterday). 12.01 in 1:39:49 (8:19 min/mile pace.
Friday: 17 miles. Drove down to the airport for this one to run along the Ohio River Trail. It was a wet run – mostly drizzling for the entire run, which created some slick spots on the way back. The first half was slow, the second picked up a little, but after this week it was not my fastest run. 17.13 in 2:33:25 (8:57 min/mile pace).
This is the end of the FIFTH “triple double” – three days of double-digit runs in a week. 53.25 miles on the week. That brings March to a close with 230 miles. This eclipses my previous highest month ever (189 in March of last year). Next month is all downhill – the month starts out with the last week of the race prep phase before shifting into tapering in preparation for the marathon at the end of the month.