Saturday, May 1, 2010

April Summary


After Shamrock, I decided I had definitely earned a little bit of downtime. The turn-around between Marshall and Shamrock had been fairly quick (not quite six months from race day to race day), and the crappy winter weather had been mentally harsh. With no races planned till the end of May, I figured I could take April pretty easy — running because I wanted to run, not because I had to run.

I also had this great idea that I would get back into cross training again, but that only happened like three times that the month. Including a one-hour personal training session that made me unable to lift my arms for three days. No fun.

The first week after the marathon, the last full week of March, I think I ran 15 miles. Then I got up to a stellar 32 miles the following week, all recovery miles, all slow as can be.

Then I busted out a 10 miler at a decent pace, and took two days off that week. The speed was coming back but the muscles weren't bouncing back very quickly.

The third week of April was an oops. A 12 mile long run, 8.5 mile speed session and a 9 mile run. There was a weekend switcheroo, where we were trying to do our long run on Saturday since people were racing the next weekend — I only had time to do 9, but along with a couple of easy, shorter runs, I hit 46 for the week. Initially it felt okay, but I followed it up with two 8 mile runs and a 9.4 mile nasty hill workout and had to take a day off. Over the next four days I ran a whopping 10 miles, and I needed it. Plus I had some sort of race silliness (see Cades Cove Loop Lope race report) coming up.

To round out April, the Ohio River Valley attacked my sinuses, resulting in a week of fighting swollen lymph nodes, phlegm and mucus. Gross.

After Shamrock, I had set a goal for April of averaging 28-38 miles weekly over the course of the month. I averaged about 37, so pretty good there. Of course, I had also set a goal of strength training twice a week ... Epic fail.

I should have set some goals for May at the beginning of the month instead of 11 days in. Oops. Let's say averaging 40-50 miles per week and completing 75 percent of my assigned workouts.

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