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Reveling in the cut-back week

Reveling in the cut-back week

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Another week of Boston training under my belt, hooray!  Last week was a cutback in terms of distance and to a lesser extent, volume.  The FF group and I had a good, challenging workout on Wednesday night — repeats of 1 minute on, 1 minute off, x 8, with a 2 minute recovery between sets — totaling just under 7 miles for the night.  Saturday we did a simple 10-miler in the city, and the ladies and I managed to run a negative split, which is always a confidence booster.  And we ran it pretty quickly, to boot.

When I first began marathon training, and running in general, I didn’t understand the importance of tapering or of taking cut-back weeks periodically.  I thought in order to become a better, faster, stronger, leaner runner, I had to go balls-to-the-wall effort 24/7/365.  Not so.  Experience has since taught me that taking appropriate time off, or just even appropriate recovery time, is as essential a part of the training as the actual running.  In fact, some may even argue that recovery and cut-back is even MORE important than the actual running, itself, to allow the body to properly rest and rejuvenate and torn/strained muscles, to repair.

This week, and subsequent weeks, will be substantial build-up weeks.  We’re slated for ~8 miles of speed on Wednesday followed by a good 17 miles of hills in Barrington on Saturday.  It will be great — and especially now that I’ve just submitted a final paper and am beginning to see the light on this thesis project… the timing could not have been better.

Thirteen weeks and counting

Thirteen weeks and counting

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…until the Boston marathon, that is.  It’s very exciting stuff, now that I have a full week of training under my belt.  Last week I finished with about 33 or so miles/week.  These next two weeks I’ll creep toward 40 and then probably top around 50.  I know it will fly by!

Saturday was also my first “double digits” run since my last 10-miler, pre-Kenya, pre-Thanksgiving.  Yeah, it had been a while.  Fortunately, Chicago has been going through a bit of a winter thaw, so the temps aren’t terrible, much of the snow has melted, and just some ice remains (definitely enough to warrant caution!).  Saturday morning, once the BB group left the FF store, we did our 10 by running north along the lakefront up to the 1.0 mile marker (around Lawrence) and then turning around.  There are some seriously speedy people in the group, which is both exciting and slightly intimidating.  My run was just lovely and super enjoyable, thanks to the nice camaraderie of Erin and Margaret.  We ran comfortably, took turns conversing the whole way, and the miles seemed to fly by.  We had the weather on our side, too, which is always a positive boost.

Running’s now back in my groove.  I missed it not being there.  I have a 6-miler home tonight, in the dark, to look forward to, an an easy 3 tomorrow before speedwork (a la hills!) on Wednesday night and 12 on Saturday… along with some other runs this week.  Looking forward to it.

And so it begins…. and so it begins, indeed.