Change of Pace

1/14	16 miles	9:12 pace, avg. hr 158, mid 30's
1/15	16 miles	9:12 pace, avg hr 157, mid 30's, exact same time as yesterday!
1/16	16 miles	9:00 pace, avg hr 154, upper 30's
	5K	7:44 pace, ran home from work (at midnight)
1/17	12.5 miles	8:38 pace, avg hr 156, low 30's
1/18	rest day
1/19	rest day, skied
1/20	3.6 hilly miles	easy pace, C O L D , skied

So it's not like I don't know that frontloading mileage isn't a good idea, but I really didn't want to have to think about getting in my workouts over the weekend and I really didn't want to slack off with the training, so it seemed like my only option. I actually found the more intense workload to be surprisingly doable and I'm being smart and taking this week as an easy one. What also surprised me was how my heart rate indicates that my body wasn't fazed by what I was throwing at it, so that's a very good thing and a concrete sign that my fitness is improving.

Now I just have to figure out when a sensible time is to start injecting a bit of speedwork into my routine. Probably not during this, my "recovery" week, since I'm planning on running a half next weekend and calling that a tempo workout and probably not next week since I'll be asking my body to cope with higher mileage again, but some time after that. It's only January, the marathon is in April, there's still time for all that.

I do think that the skiing worked out to be a nice low-impact cross-training expedition, aside from the stupid snowboarder who slammed into me and left a big bruise on my thigh. I could really feel the stabilizing abdominal muscles on the side of my waist....the psoas, I think? I'd really like to be working more on my core strength, so this was a fun way to get started on that. This month's Runner's World has an article on core training, so I'll have to study that and try to incorporate some of the exercises they suggest. I don't ever want the freakishly non-runner-esque six pack that's sported by Josh Cox on the cover of the issue, but I guess if that was the price I had to pay to run a 2:13 marathon, I might reconsider.