We rejoin our hero in the battle of the pavement in the fourteenth week of his marathon training plan for the Columbus Marathon. His marathon is October 20, 2019. Our hero is following the Pfitzinger 18/55 plan again, and is on the final week of the race prep phase prior to tapering.
Monday: 10 miles with 4 x 1.2k @ 5k pace. It’s another Monday, and the thing that had a case of the Mondays was my watch. Again. After an attempt to get things that were once synced to be synced again, I gave up and tracked intervals manually. It was a bit warm at 68 and rainy out, and my legs were still feeling it from the race on Saturday. I wanted my intervals to be between 6:50 and 7:15 min/mile, they were 7:23, 7:38, 7:41, and 7:49. Overall, 10.15 in 1:26:57 (8:34 min/mile pace).
Tuesday: 7 + 6 x 100m strides. Fall came by for a visit today. It was in the low-50s, which was nice. The legs were feeling good, probably better than I thought they were. My strides were FAST. Overall, 8.01 miles in 1:08:00 (8:29 min/mile).
Wednesday: 11 miles. Fall stayed around, and I ran at East Fork. There’s two things about East Fork – one is that it is hilly. The other is that it is the one place I can’t seem to run without taking a pitstop. I didn’t run all the way into Williamsburg, and instead ran by the lake (which takes me down and back up a very big hill). 11.07 miles in 1:40:37 (9:05 min/mile pace).
Thursday: 4 miles recovery. I was supposed to wake up in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, but Hotels_dot_com had my reservation a week later (incidentally, this is the SECOND time I’ve been on the receiving end of that problem – the other was a reservation made by someone else for me). I woke up early because I ended up driving to Ft. Wayne, and was very tired (my legs were tired twice over, because I’m not sure I was fully recovered from yesterday’s hills). Also, it was warm – 70F. 4.17 miles in 37:46 (9:03 min/mile pace).
Friday: LAST CHANCE 20 MILE RUN. This is the exclamation point at the end of the race prep phase. I went to bed early to get up early to run the park and neighborhood next to it. It was a chilly morning. I successfully found the ONE good person in the entire subdivision (they saw me coming and waited without blocking the sidewalk). Shame that one good person was right down the road from a construction crew that started up (complete with a concrete truck, unlit loaders beeping around, and a trailer mostly blocking someone’s driveway) at 6:00 AM.
I hydrated with Gatorade Endurance mostly, and every other mile. My water was leaking (fortunately, the vest protected the phone just enough), and I did take water at some odd miles towards the end. I fueled with Gatorade Endurace Mango at 7 and 13.5.
I decided early on to fast-finish the last two miles. After the first 18 miles in 2:41:16 (8:58 min/mile pace), I finished the last two in 8:26 and 8:29. Overall, 20.02 in 2:58:18 (8:54 min/mile pace). THE HAY IS IN THE BARN.
That’s it for the week and for the race prep phase of training. All that remains is tapering. 53 miles this week. Just under 8 hours spent running. 🍻