116 mile week (well sorta)

Tools of the trade during a 4 hour night run

Technically it's correct I did have a 116 mi week. There are 168 hours in a week (24x7=168) and if you started my week at the start of the Holiday Lake 50k and ended the week 165 hours later at 3 a.m. on the next Saturday, I covered a total of 116 miles.

I recovered pretty well from Holiday Lake... took a couple of easy and short recovery runs the two days after HL and resumed normal training right away. Obviously from a total weekly volume standpoint I'm in a good spot with my training and with 6 weeks to go until Umstead I'll try to keep the total miles about the same but also try to take at least one run of 35-40 miles and some more good back to backs.

I decided not to run the Pilot Mountain Marathon on 2/19. I really hated to miss it but my younger son had a big weekend of AAU basketball with an important parent/coach meeting to discuss tournaments and do some planning. I didn't want to miss the meeting so I opted out of Pilot Mtn. SO instead I decided to do a night run on Fri night-Sat morning. I did the run solo around my neighborhood. Couldn't talk anyone into joining me. I did five 5.1 mile loops covering 25.5 miles with a running time of 4:10 (which included 4 bathroom breaks, re-filling hand held bottles, a clothing change) Since I will likely be running into the night at Umstead I thought it was important to try a night run. Began the run at 11 p.m and finished up at 3:10 a.m. I really didn't get sleepy at all. With a big pasta meal around 7 p.m. I was worried about my stomach but it really wasn't a problem... guess "everything burns in the furnace"(Once a Runner quote.) Wore a headlamp just to get used to it but really only turned it on when cars went by so they could see me and I could hop up on the sidewalk or front yards. Decided I didn't really want to find out if the driver was drunk or just coming home late! Got pretty quiet between 2 and 3 and with a nice full moon shining down on me it was kinda nice.

After the night run I was pretty wasted most of the weekend. My legs were fine but took until Monday to feel normal again. I didn't run a step the rest of Saturday and Sunday. Although I did walk for over an hour each day. I did a nice 20 mile run today (Monday) thanks to an unexpected Presidents Day holiday. Averaged 8:23 per mile on an unseasonably warm day. Started the run in a thin long sleeve shirt and finished up shirtless (okay no laughing at the thought of my untanned, strapping, 5'9" 130 lb frame running barechested on a February morning)

I decided to do my training log online daily rather then do summaries in the text (Can be found on the right column of the blog)