Don't be stupid

That's the feeling I'm currently having, after nearly breaking my elbow this morning. Bounding up the stairs from the basement, I slammed my right elbow up into the basement ceiling, and had massive pain and a very swollen knot right above the elbow. Ibuprofen and ice have helped, so I don't believe it's any worse than a cuntusion. The moral of the story is, one stupid accident can screw up all I've worked for in the past 15 weeks.

BTW, in the past 15 weeks, I've averaged 54 miles per week. The last 7 weeks I've managed to bump that up to 58/week. Still trying to get 60/week average, which considering I've yet to run more than 13 miles in a day yet this year is pretty amazing. So my consistency has been the key. Only 7 days off in the last 14 weeks. Nine doubles in the last 6 weeks. But running club is due to end in 2 weeks time, and I've got to chart out a weekend schedule that will get me to the line on October 7 fit and ready. Last week I had a nice series of runs Thurday thru Sun, w/ 8.5, 9.6, 10.5 and 9 miles. I like the concept of 30 miles in 3 runs on a 3 day weekend, so that's what I'm going to strive for here on out. If I get 16 in on a Saturday, I need to surround it w/ 14 miles on the other 2 days. If I do 10,10 and 10, that'd be good too. The plan would be to do something like this:

July 27-29 : 8, 15, 7
Aug. 3 - 5 : 9, 10, 11
Aug 10-12 : 9, 10, 12 (5K race Sat)
Aug 17-19 : 8, 15, 8
Aug 24-26 : 8, 17, 8
8/31 - 9/2 : 9, 10, 12 (5K race Sat)
Sept. 7 - 9 : 8, 17, 8
Sep 14-16 : 7, 16, 7 (1/2 marathon Sat)
Sep 21-23 : 9, 11, 10
Sep 28-30: 7, 9, 6 (5K race Sat)
Oct. 5 - 7 : 5, 3, 27

I'm racing more than I have in the past, but I've not done as much speedwork this training cycle, so I want to stay sharp. Plus, the 5Ks are all low key (2 are cross country races), and the 1/2 Marathon won't be done all out. Just have to relax and not do anything too stupid.

Where have I been?

OK, so I haven't posted for a while. Part of that is I've been busy working. Another reason is that I've been busy running (326 miles in the last 40 days). But most likely, the fact that I got a new laptop @ work where I post my blogs and for some reason the url was lost off of my favorites and I had to retrieve it through my google account. Anyway, enough about that.

So apparantly I recovered fine from my neck/upper back strain, and my running has gone very well since then. The past 5 weeks have seen 56, 59, 59, 56 and 49 mile weeks, and I'm @ 29 miles in 3 days this week. I've managed to incorporate the summer running club schedule of M, W and R afternoon runs into my normal morning runs with no real hiccups. For 3 weeks I ran once on Sun, Tues, Wed (pm), Fri and Sat, and twice on Mon and Thurs. On July 4th I managed a 37:53 for 10k that effort and execution wise, I'd rate a 7.5 out of 10, with the only real disappointment being a slowdown in miles 5 and 6. Still, I finished 11th overall and 1st in the always tough 40-44 AG, making it 3 consecutive AG wins for this race (+ 2 AG wins for the mile as well).

My running in relation to the training for Twin Cities seems to be going just fine as well. I sometimes wonder if I'm getting enough long runs in, but I still have 11+ weeks to go, so I feel pretty good about where I'm at. I should hit 60+ miles this week, and I'd like to average 60 for the 16 weeks proir to taper (currently @ 56/week for 6 weeks). Two years ago when I trained and ran 2:59, I averaged 54 mpw. But I am 2 years older, and the plan is to get this 43 year old to the start line healthy and in shape to run (I hope) a PR, in that order.

So I will try and post more regularly, and we'll see how it goes.