Fuel SMART,Train HARD, Run FAST.

Easy 8 at home. My legs are feeling more fresh than expected today. Wonder if that will last.

Peak week!

Drove to Danish Blvd. to get some rolling hills to simulate Boston's rollers.

2 mi Wu

4x1.5miles @7:00ish effort (GAP~ 7:05, 7:08, 7:09, 7:10)

800m jog

2.5mi Cd

My GAP paces were't great, weren't bad. It was a total guessing game. Had to go off my power meter to gage it but even that was hard because it kept changing so I went off feel. But even then, I felt like I was running more of a 10K half marathon effort.

The weather was perfect, so that is a huge bonus today.

I expected today to be easy bc how is 4X 1.5mi intervals around marathon pace supposed to be hard? If they are, I should be in trouble. Well, they were and I'm not in trouble. You are.

I'm Tired. I'll chalk it up to my favorite word, "cumilative fatigue." Its the only excuse I ever have anymore and I'm going to use it all day long, all the way to Boston. Ironically, I feel like my fitness is peaking right now.

A few miles to shake out my legs for tomorrows long tempo.

Wind & rain...just like every time I’ve ran Boston so I guess it was a good simulation:) Today was a long tempo effort. I tried to run a fine line between trying to hit my pace and not letting my HR get too high. I started off with my Gamin saying my performace condition was +5 which is awesome. I was supprised since my body is tired, but it was a confidence boost starting the workout. 

The first few miles felt much harder than I anticipated and I knew it was going to be a suffer fest for the next hour. I really struggled to lower my pace and wondered why because the effort was there. The workout was supposed to feel like the last 10 miles of a marathon since I was running on tired legs, but also like I could have gone a couple more miles at that pace. I would say that was accurate, although I'm so glad it was only 10 miles. It seemed impossible to lower my pace against the wind on the way back without getting into a lactate threshold zone (>181bpm.) Really, I dipped into that zone more than I would have liked and if I do that on race day, I'll be toast by the last 10k, a feeling I'm all too familar with. Today was really hard to measure and keep a balance of my effort/pace/HR. Woof.

I have a 12 mile tempo next week so hopefully it will be better conditions to test out my pace again.

I’m going to call this run the shuffle hustle. Picture a person pretending to run but they’re basically just speed walking. That was me for the first couple miles, then I warmed up a little bit to 830 pace. It was a struggle and gave me huge doubts about being able to put in a long run tomorrow.  Came home and sat in the sauna for a bit which helped revive me just enough to resolve that I could slog out my last long tomorrow run in my first of two peak weeks. Exhausted. 

Today was great. Felt good from the start and felt better each mile. I have been fasting for all my runs this year but started introducing fuel again in prep for race day. I  took: Sport Legs, 400 mg caffeine, and gels every 4 miles. Also needed some Ibuprofen for a hamstring issue today. Seemed all of it came together and the affront was more than I planned on but added it all wrong and took a higher but still an ergogenic dose so that was actually a good test. By the end of the run I felt I could have gone easily another 5 miles and 10 miles with some effort but that’s a good feeling ending a 60ish mile peak week and basically a race effort 2 days ago. Happy with the progress on tired legs.

The last two weeks I’ve hit the point in my training termed “functional over reaching” which is where I should be but the fatigue is unreal. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been following the Brook Hansons marathon method plan that I paid for specifically for Boston. The plan is structurally built on cumulative fatigue and has really been a stretch for me due to the lack of rest and constant efforts a day apart, week after week. The individual workouts are slightly less intense than other plans (i.e. 4x1.5 mi at marathon pace. How is that hard if you plan to run 26 miles at that pace?)  but what makes a difference is the lack of rest days. It just builds and compounds and you feel weaker and weaker:) Therefore your long run at the end of the week is simulating each week what your legs would feel like at the end of your last 16 miles.

I’ve done this plan one other time in 2015 for Boston. I trained to go sub 3:00, but changed my goal when I got there based on the crazy weather and decided to just run it for fun and not push too hard because I knew I wouldn’t hit my goal anymore nor PR. So I ran for fun and still got a 3:10 without too much effort aside from a moderate feeling long run, so I knew the plan worked. The difference is in hindsight, I realized I cheated the real foundation of the plan by substituting some of my easy runs for elliptical miles when I would become sore or overly fatigued, therefore never truly hitting functional over reaching.  As I’ve educated myself more (love Luke Humphreys podcast series regarding this plan!!) I have realized that it is essential to run tired on those days and not substitute elliptical or trail miles in order to really get to that point of functional overreaching fatigue that is necessary and essential to hit at 6-8 weeks out from the marathon. If you hit it, you’ll know it and you’re right where you should be. Love and hate it all at the same time. The fatigue is unreal and every single run is quiet the effort. Nothing has felt easy for a very long time. So excited to see what comes of it.