Training Report: June 23 - 29

Wednesday, June 25: 7.2 miles; Early morning run on sidewalks and boulevards when possible. Also did a 1 km loop on trails. Very humid weather, even at 4:30 in the morning. Whew!

Thursday, June 26: 13.2 miles; 1.3 mile warm-up, 6.4 miles of trails, 5.5 miles on the road/sidewalk/boulevard (when possible) without food or water. I felt really strong and smooth tonight and easily scampered up all of the trail hills. My distance and hillwork are starting to pay off. Awesome run that really boosted my sagging confidence!! Avergage pace = 9:05/mile. NICE

Friday, June 27: 5.8 miles; Easy run to stretch out the legs. 1.3 mile on the road, 3.2 on trails, and 1.3 miles back home on the road. Another humid night but comfortable temps. The run really did loosen me up and get out the kinks. Tomorrow is a big bad day at Afton working the hills and getting comfortable with the course for next week's 50km there.

Saturday, June 28: 16.4 mi; Trail run at Afton State Park. Felt good and smooth through the Africa loop. Ran with RD John Storkamp on 2nd loop of race course at a fast pace, which really put me in the red zone a few times, but gave me a great workout. Had to postpone the 3rd leg for 20 minutes to wait out a passing t-storm. Was really tight from waiting in the car so I only ran another 5 km before calling it a day. Next time I run at Afton it will be the 50 km race! I also got to meet Keith K. and Nancy, which was great.

Sunday, June 19: 9.9 miles on hard-packed singletrack trails at Murphy-Hanrehan Park with a 1.5 mile cooldown. What a roller coaster of a course! I felt surprisingly strong and very fast, after having been beaten up the previous day at Afton. Another confidence-boosting workout after a tough day at Afton. Average pace = 8:47/ mile. SMOKIN'!!

Total weekly miles = 54

Back-to-back solid weeks for the first time this year. I can still see that I need much more hillwork, especially if I'm going to tackle 50 miles on the Superior trail in September. I'll also have to slowly start ramping up the miles as well. This weekend is the 50 km at Afton which I will approach as a training run. As far as regular training goes, I feel I need to get back to the schedule I started out with at the beginning of the year, which had hillwork on Wednesdays. I've been running hilly courses on those days the past few weeks, but not necessarily focusing on the hills as much as getting some distance in. The back-to-back long runs on the weekends have been working wonders and for some odd reason, I'm having great runs on the 2nd day when I expect to have a rough day. Go figure! Anyway, it was a great week overall and I really enjoyed getting to meet a few folks in the trail running community.