It's been a while folks but I'm back.
To put it lightly, I've been really busy with work the last few weeks. The basics go like this:
Jan 23 - 28 - 42 miles, lots of strength work
Jan 29 - Feb 4 - 63 miles most while out in Seattle for work. Cranked out some fast ones this week. Set my PR on a trail I run all the time. It's a 10 mile loop and I set the time during a 20 mile run on miles 10-20. Pumped.
Feb 5 - 11 - 53 miles. Should have been more but dinged up my quad on a bike ride and had to cut a hour off my long weekend run. The good news is that even holding back I ran one of my faster times on my go-to weekend run on the Green Rock trai. Disappointed that I had to cut it short but was encouraged that I ran what I did while holding back so much.
Feb 12 - 19 - 26 miles+. Quad was pretty sore on Monday so I went to my chiro and she worked a serious knot out of my quad and poof, the issue was pretty much gone. Still I talked with my coach and we decided on a rest week. I kept stretching and foam rolling and things felt way better. Good enough that I did a 32 story stair climb in Springfield, IL.
It took me 2:59 seconds to get to the top which was good enough for 10th overall out of 600 or so. It was a really cool event and there were some real deal climbers there that taught me a thing or two. Justin Stewart is a top flight guy in terms of US stairclimbing so it was really awesome to run into someone like this and have the chance to chat a bit. He even paced me during my climb. Amazing how much more fluid he was than me. I was like a bull in a china shop while this guy glided along. Check out one of his workouts here
On Sunday I had a 2 hour and 10 minute Negative Split run scheduled. The goal for these is keep it easy for the first half then pick it up for the second "half." The plan was 8 miles out in 1:10 followed by 8 miles back in 1 hour. From a split persective, thats 8:45 out/7:30 back. I eased in and felt great outbound really having to hold back to keep the pace in that 8:45 range. I hit 8 miles at 1:10 on the nose then headed back. Legs felt great despite the ass kicking stair climb the day before so I settled in to what felt like about 7:30 which was in fact a little closer to 7:05. This pace got progressively faster and ended up landing my last 3 miles of the run in 19:42 with gas still in the tank and more turnover available.
The quad feels great, my travel is slowing down a little and results are showing in terms of my speed. Super excited for the upcoming race season to start!