Last week in running:
- Monday: off
- Tuesday: 6.7 mile jogging stroller run
- Wednesday: 7.7 miles
- Thursday: 6.5 mile jogging stroller run
- Friday: 7 miles with 10×100 meter strides
- Saturday: off
- Sunday: 12 miles (Cherry Tree Ten Miler race with a two mile warmup)
Total: 40.2 miles
I was due for a recovery week so I cut back the mileage, ran five days instead of six and limited speed work to some strides at the local track. The timing couldn’t have been better because the Cherry Tree Ten Mile race was on Sunday and I wanted to go into the race with fresh legs. I had a great race and finished in 1:20:01, over three minutes faster than the time I ran last year. I averaged an 8:00 per mile pace but the last mile was my fastest by far: 7:29. It felt really good to finish so strong and the race was proof that I am in fact regaining lots of fitness.
Now that I had a nice easy week, I’m ready to step it up some more. I’m expecting that I will be running some doubles (two runs per day, for those who aren’t familiar with that term) once my mileage starts to edge up past sixty miles per week. Doubling will become necessary because I will soon reach the point at which it will be hard to continue to add more miles to my daily runs. While running doubles is useful for boosting your mileage, a recent article from Running Times states that doing two runs a day has an added benefit of speeding recovery and provides your body with additional training stimuli. More training stimuli= a greater impetus for your body to make the physiological adaptations that will enable you to run faster. A side note: here’s another good article about how to incorporate doubles into your training.
My foray into multiple runs per day came sooner than I thought. My plan was to run two loops of Prospect Park yesterday, for a total of 6.7 miles. I strapped Taiho into the jogging stroller and we were off. I plodded along with leaden legs. Then just as we were finishing up the first loop, Taiho threw up… a lot. I don’t know why (and he’s fine now, thankfully). Anyway, that vomiting episode signaled the end of the run so we went home. I decided to get back out there in the evening because I’m stubborn like that; when I have a mileage goal I want to reach, it’s hard for me to settle for anything less. So later that day I set out for another 3.35 miles. My legs felt much better this time around. I guess there is something to this recovery thing that doubles are apparently good for.
