3 Weeks to Philly (Nov 3-Nov 9)

Planned miles: 40

Actual miles: 49
Planned long run: 16
Actual long run: 16
Accumulated pace for the week: 7:54

Links to key runs:10 x 800; Friday Quick Run; Long Run including Blue Hill

Three weeks out for me is a step-down week going into the final two week taper.  I still wanted to accumulate a decent mile total; something consistent with where I've been over the last four weeks, which is close to 50 miles on average. 

The plan within the plan for this week was to try and get my average pace back down below 8 min miles for the week, and to find some hills to run.  Here's a nice graph set from Strava of my elevation totals for the last few months, and while I like the progressions followed by resets, those are really not great totals.  Maybe too much running on the perfectly flat Charles River and on the Neponset River Trails...it's hard not to in those spots though, they're so scenic!



So, instead of running to PJP park in the evenings, I ran the Milton loop.  And instead of hitting the Charles at lunch, I opted to run up to BC, which ended up being a pleasantly fast run.  I'm actually not that surprised with the pace of Friday's lunch run, since I had the company of a strong runner in RTB teammate Dan.

I've already written a bit about the Yasso 800's on Wednesday, which I was really happy with, especially because 3-4 months ago, that workout would have left me depleted and hobbled for 3-4 days, but  this week I was humming in under 48 hours.

The only thing left of note would be the 16 mile long run I did this AM.  I decided to run out Randolf Ave all the way to the Blue Hill Forrest which meant 8 miles of rolling hills to start the run, and then I would climb up to the top of the Blue Hill ski-hill/observatory.  Its a steep climb: ~400 feet in roughly 6 tenths of a mile, and it was really tough, but I did a decent job of holding my pace.  That climb ended up triggering my max heart rate (173) of the run though, which is what I had in mind.


My thought was, if I can trigger the max heart rate at the mid-point in the run, and wear out my muscles in the process, then when I hit the flat last 6 miles of the 16 mile run, my body may be experiencing the relative discomfort of mile 20+ that I'll feel during the final 6 miles of the marathon.  And I was there...I was forced to pull-up to wait for traffic at around mile 12 and getting back moving was not an easy task!

The goal for this long run was to keep it under 8 min miles for the run, and to hopefully hit my marathon pace on the flat final 6.


So, that comes in at a 7:42 average.  Solid for me, but not the 7:37 I'll be shooting for at Philly.

Now the taper begins.  I'll cut back on total miles but try to accelerate to marathon pace in those runs as quickly as possible.  I would give my overall health a 7 right now (with totally injured/fatigued being a 1) so the idea now is just to get myself back up to a 10 over the next 10-14 days, but not in cold-turkey fashion.

Miles run in the past 365 days: 1,748
Miles run in 2014: 1,569
Philly plan through 14 weeks: 608 miles run vs planned 533.
Philly plan vs Boston plan through 14 weeks: 608 miles vs 513.

I'm currently projecting to finish at 675 miles, and I likely will not try and surpass my goals for the next two weeks during the tape.  I will say that when I first worked out a training plan for Philly, it totaled 665 miles, but I figured that kind of an increase over Boston's 589 was too aggressive.  Thankfully I've been healthy and the original plan wasn't too far off the mark!