Monday, July 2, 2007

The Final Piece

Saturday- 0 miles- nice day off
Sunday- 21miles- 5:01- Treyfoot loop

Well, it is all done now. All the key training is now in the running log! The only thing left to do is maintenance tempo runs and recovery easy jogs enjoying the great USA. Anything more would just screw up the training I have already done and would make no impact physiologically.

Yesterday I met up with my training bud from 2001-2002, Jeff Wilbur, and went out and ran the famous treyfoot mountain loop into the Shenandoah mountains. This one has a good deal of climb and decent on technical footing trails. It was an absolutely beautiful day and the weather was outstanding (60-75 and sunny with a nice breeze).

My legs were very tired feeling like I had already been running 20 miles when we started (and continued to feel that way all day long) but my calves and quads were not sore at all. Not even soreness in the hip flexors...The only soreness I felt was in the hamstrings at the distal insertion behind the knee and in my deep hip external rotators in the butt. And this morning that too is now gone.

Super psyched!

6 comments:

Bryon Powell said...

Loomdag,
Time to rest? If I were you (having trained big miles, but all on flat), I would do one more workout... or two if you could do it twice this week. I'd do two or three repeats down Neighbor Mountain at Jeremy's Run or something similar. No need to run even a step up the mountain, no need to run sub-6 pace coming down. The workout consists almost entirely of a eccentric quad thrashing.

If I was in your shoes, but with some more downhill work, I'd probably still aim to do one of these workouts this coming weekend. You've toed the line 25 times for 100s, so you know that the most common non-cramping muscle problem is trashed downhill quads. The good thing is even one or two downhill workouts can work wonders.

Oh, BTW, this is not meant to be discouraging at all - you've had an awesome stretch of training and capped it with a great week. :-) You'd mentioned a while ago that you wish ultrarunners were less secretive about their training, so I figured I'd share my thoughts.

Anonymous said...

Welcome home, Greg!! Hope you have a great race in VT - I know that you'll have a blast being out there!!

Sarah

I am a runner. "We are what we repeatedly do" said...

Agreed, while I am not planning any runs longer than 14 miles and am not intending on doing any monstrous marathon length tempo runs or super-beat-down hill repeat sessions, I do plan on getting in 5 more quality sessions.

1)4x10min at 6:20 pace on min rests

2)Hard rolling hilly backtop 10 miler slamming the downhills

3) 14 miler in my old hometown with steady 2 mile up and 2 mile downhills run at marathon pace

4) 2.5 w up, 6mile at Tempo, 2.5m c dn

5) 2.5w up 3xmile at 6:15, 2.5c dn

Patrick said...

Well it looks like its clear sailing for you until the 100M. Time to let those weary legs rest.

Looking for some info on this end: my wife and have decided that she will do a nationwide job search when she finishes grad school next May. One of the areas we have sort of highlighted as a possible destination (jobs willing) is Blacksburg or Boone, NC. Any opinions on the running in these areas? Year round weather? Pros/cons?

Hope to see you at JFK this year (since you got that free entry - bastard! How did you rig that drawing?!)

PR

Matt Hart said...

i'd love to see you whole training program published online to view. i use google docs (docs.google.com). i have my spreadsheet on there and you can publish it with a link. it would be neat for us coaches to view what you did in that format. just a thought. when i'm done training for each race i usually publish my "run training" log so people can see. kinda cool.

Sophie Speidel said...

Greg,

I wish I had been able to run with you guys on Treyfoot...5:01 pace is EASY on that loop and it would have been a blast...oh well! Glad you had fun!

Congrats on officially becoming a civilian!