...long slow distance and a look-back...

Ran 21 miles this morning at Lake Mead...legs feel great.  This was my final long run on this training cycle.  I am two Saturdays out from the Death Valley Marathon and have the Running From An Angel half marathon next weekend at Lake Mead.

My plan for the next two weeks is pretty simple.  I am backing off quite a bit on mid-week mileage with the intent of keeping the legs fresh.  I am not necessarily taking extra days off, just cutting the runs down to the 3-5 mile range.

One issue I am having is my feet are getting sore on my long runs. It happens in the 15-18 mile range.  I have decided that I am getting myself a pair of Hokas post-marathon for future long runs.  I plan on taking two weeks of low mileage post-Death Valley before starting my spin up for the next round of races.

Weekly Mileage 1 Sep 13 - 18 Jan 14

Since I am at the tail end of a big training cycle, I decided to graph out my weekly mileage since September when I first started to get serious about the Oct-Feb races.  The second week is an outlier during which I had some major transitions going on in duties at work and unfortunately, did not make time to run.  The next lowest week (Oct 20-26) was my fitness eval which I wasn't going to mess around with due to its importance on my career.

In October, I ran my first 10 miler and had three runs over 10 with a long run of 11.39 miles.  In November, I had three runs over 10 with a long run of 14.83 miles (my first time running the Red Rock National Recreation Area Loop). December had three runs over 10 with a long of 17.15 miles.  So far in January, I have done three runs over 10 miles with a long of 21.  The toughest runs were the first of two Red Rock loops, the 18.33 mile trail run earlier this month and the hilly 10.31 mile trail run last week.  Overall, virtually all the runs have been hill runs with the majority of the running in the 2300-3000 ft elevation range.  Frank Shorter (1972 Olympic marathoner and gold medalist) said "Hills are speedwork in disguise".  Hopefully running all these hills bodes well for running a flat marathon at 200 feet below sea level.