Monday, January 30: Ivy Creek Greenway – 5 miles – Nothing special about this run, just a typical afternoon five miler.
Tuesday, January 31: George Pierce Park – 8 miles – This workout started off a little rough due to the fact that I got out of work late and the Suwannee Greenway trail was under construction, but I was able to salvage it on the George Pierce park multi-use trails. I ran five sets of 30-60-90s with a 13 minute warm up and roughly the same cool down. I didn’t feel great but it was good to get my legs moving at a faster pace for a while. I think it was a good tune up for Saturday’s race and I’m looking forward to continuing to get more workouts like these in, in the future.
Wednesday, February 1: Ivy Creek Greenway – 5 miles – I took it nice and slow today. My calves were hurting from yesterday’s workout, which is probably a result of the combination of running hard and running the entire 8 miles on pavement. I probably should have got up this morning and done a three mile shakeout just to help out my legs but as long as they loosen up by Saturday I’ll be alright.
Thursday, February 2: Ivy Creek Greenway – 7 miles – Another easy day. I felt a little bit better as the run when on, but my calves are still a little tight, especially my left calf. I’m debating whether or not to wear calf sleeves on Saturday if they are still bothering me.
Friday, February 3: Ivy Creek Greenway – 5 miles – My calf loosed up a good bit today, which is really encouraging for tomorrow. I had originally planned to get up early to give myself a full 24 hours before the start of the race but I couldn’t get out of bed before the sun came up and waiting until after work to run. I ran the greenway trail out and back nice and easy. Now it’s off to Watkinsville, GA in the morning for the first trail race of the year.
Saturday, February 4: Dirty Spokes Heritage Park trail race – 10 miles (8 mile race) – The first race of the year and my first race since the series finale last summer. The weather was perfect, right around 50 degrees slightly overcast and dry much better than the 45 and rainy that was predicted. I’ll try and write up a full race recap in the next few days but this is the basic breakdown of the race. There were a couple of guys that showed up that I knew and had a feeling one of them would be the eventual winner as I planned on starting off relaxed because I didn’t think I had the training to try and run with the leaders. That went out the window early. At the horn I settled into third behind Ian McCann from Atlanta Track Club and Matt Rivers. About a quarter mile into the race I decided to press the pace a little bit and try to spread things out to give me a cushion over some of the other guys. I took the lead and led for about two miles. Around 2.5 I got passed but made a really strong move at 3 miles to put Matt and myself out in front by a good distance, unfortunately I wasn’t able to hang on much longer and fell off the pace from there. After bad fifth and sixth miles I found myself in third place and decided I needed to rally and hold onto third over the final two miles. I was able to do that with a strong seventh mile and a complete survival mode eighth mile. I crossed the finish line in 51:00, which was a little faster than I had anticipated going in, but it was clear that after a month of training and only one workout I didn’t have the legs to race the full 8 miles, however had I not gotten out fast I probably would have ended up getting fifth or sixth by just trying to hang out in the pack. Sometimes you just have to go for it and see what happens.
Sunday, February 5: Ft. Yargo State Park – 8 miles – Nice recovery run after yesterday’s race. My left hamstring was super sore from the hilly final two miles of the race but I actually covered the seven mile loop at a half way decent pace. I added on the brand new Turtle Creek loop for an additional mile before hitting up Barberitios for a burrito afterwards. I’m looking forward to doing some mileish repeats on the turtle creek loop because its tight single track and it would be a great simulation of a lot of the trail race courses. Overall, it was great to get back out to Ft. Yargo and run the inner loop for the first time. I love running there and I’ve got to get back out to get a loop of the ½ marathon course in pretty soon.
Weekly Total: 48 miles on seven runs (one workout) – This was an encouraging week. I got my miles up closer to 50, which is right about where I want to be at this point in my training, I got in a solid workout and then survived a tough race. Moving forward I need to continue to build my mileage and continue to get in at least one workout a week in. My goal is to start replacing the five mile days with seven/eight mile days and start getting in longer 10-12 mile runs on the weekends for a couple weeks. That should steadily increase my mileage and keep me ahead of where I was at this point last year.
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