This past week I had seemed more tiring than usual and Im not sure if it was the workouts, the depth of the marathon training, or possibly a little bit of travel. I had to travel back to Boulder to adhere to some business matters which went well in my opinion. It was fantastic to see old friends in Boulder and receive some treatment from Dr. Richie Hanson. (A youngman with old man knowledge of human physiology) While in Boulder I made some realizations about my training. In this marathon build up one of the tweaks I have made is to keep some of my "recovery" days in between sessions at what i like to call just "steady" pace which is probably 6-6:30 pace at altitude. In other words, Im not just jogging around out there at 8-9 min pace recovering for the next workout. The bathrooms at Eben G. Fine park in Boulder were exactly 2 miles from my front door of my old apartment. I used to be psyched if I reached the bathrooms in under 17 min. For some reason, it just dawned on me that thats 8:30 mile pace. Im probably not exactly making alot of hay at that particular pace. 6 to 6:30 pace is 2 min per mile faster and much closer to marathon pace. Im thinking metabolically alot more marathon benefits might happen at this training pace including burning your fuel at a rate thats more similar to a marathon race and putting similar neuromuscular stresses on bones ligaments and tendons in the legs. Now i have no scientific proof of any of this but its a gut feeling and a bit of an experiment. And after all is it really going to kill me to train at 6:15 pace??/  I have made several other tweaks in this buildup and perhaps I will revisit them if 10-10-10 goes well. 

Last weekends 18 mi tempo run seemed to go pretty well as GMAC (greg mcmillan) and ryan drove with us handing us fluids along the way.  We (Nick, Fasil, and myself) kept it steady for the first 14 miles knocking down 5:10-5:15 miles until the last 4 which were completed in 19:49 for an average pace of 5:09 for the last 15 miles. This workout was 6 secs/mi faster than a few weeks ago when we just did a straight 15 mile tempo. Overall, all of us left feeling happy but in the end, workouts are just workouts and you can never get too high or low off of one particular session.  

On Sept 18 we completed our last really long run of 25 miles but it was kept pretty slow the whole way. We just made sure we depleted our glycogen and started the fat burning process.  

I spoke to the guy who makes it happen at the love/hate (NB) and he tells me he has something special for me with the kit for Chicago. Its a surprise but looking forward to make the release!

20 days remain!