Sunday, August 17, 2008

Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon: 6 weeks to go

I blink a few times and all of a sudden, 12 weeks have gone by. I have three more high mileage weeks until the taper. I'm really looking forward to the taper but I'm also looking forward to hitting all my quality work. Yesterday's race was a nice trial for the marathon. I didn't do it at the perfect pace but it wasn't perfect racing conditions and I ran a lot of it by myself.

One thing I found is that my endurance has clearly improved. My old marathon pace of 7:37 miles (4:45s) is very comfortable, almost comfortable enough to be slightly faster than general aerobic pace. The miles I've put in the last three months have really made a difference. Also, there's the fact that I launched into this training program three weeks after doing the Flying Pig in May.

Today, I did a true recovery run, a nice 10 miler done in 1:28 flat, about a 9 minute mile pace. Heart rate was a nice low 135ish throughout. I had no real desire to push it any faster -- could have gone even slower and be happy.

Here's the week just past:

Monday Rest
Tuesday: 9 miles with 5x600
Wednesday: 14 miles
Thursday: 6 miles
Friday: Rest
Saturday: 23 miles (3 mile warmup, 18.7 mile race, 1.5 mile warmdown)
Sunday: 10 miles at recovery

Weekly total: 62 miles (100K)
Year to date: 1566 miles (2519K)

It blows my mind that next week i'll top 1600 miles for the year. That was about my mileage for all of 2006.

Week schedule
Monday: Rest
Tuesday: 11 miles with 6x1000
Wednesday: 15 miles
Thursday: 4 miles / 6 miles
Friday: 12 miles
Saturday: 5 miles
Sunday: 17 miles (14 at pace. I may forgo this given yesterday's run. Or I may do half of this run at pace).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Yumke. From what I read in your article, you surely are a sportsman with high stamina. I know the area of Toronto Waterfront you ran through very well because I happen to live in Toronto and I work as a realtor. I've experienced a lot of successes in my job but yours is quite an achievement people can take example from. Even though we do completely different activities, there is a thing we have in common. Negotiating with the customers is a long distance run for me, but if I hold on and do my best, the results can be highly rewarding. And that's what counts. Have a nice day.
Elli