Less than 4 weeks to Bloomsday

It's been quite a while since I have posted my training, and I apologize for that. Following my disappointment in New York, I decided to take a short break, and the break kept extending itself as new challenges arose. I also felt that I was continuing to toot my own horn when it came to workouts without producing race results. I'll give a very brief rundown of the last several months, and then give a recap of my most recent training.

NYC was several months ago, but I think it's important to note that no injury occurred. I simply had a bad day. Bad marathon days certainly happen, and I think one could argue this was my first truly bad day. The timing was rough after being hurt for so long. Training had been going well, and I was confident and ready. Fortunately that training has not gone to waste, and I continue to inch towards my best fitness. 

The next race was the US XC Champs, which I also had high hopes for, but disappointed myself once more. I don't know exaclty why, as my workouts for the 8 weeks leading up the race were strong by my standards. I can blame it on the fact that I hadn't finished a race in 18 months, or not going to altitude before, but either way, I didn't reach my expectations. I followed the US XC Champs with a few of the best workouts I have had in at least a couple of years and was excited heading into NACAC XC in Boca Raton, FL as well as Gate River in mid-March. Unfortunately, the week of NACAC, I suffered a small tear in my plantaris. I had originally thought I had damaged my achilles, but an ultrasound fortunately showed that was not the case. It still required 2 weeks in the pool, so there was a bit of a setback in fitness, but nothing overwhelming. I have been slowly building back up since then and am back to reasonable volume and training. I plan to start posting my training weekly again and look forward to a productive spring/summer. 

It seems that the plantaris injury was caused by wearing spikes during training after the long break from track workouts. Because of this I have decided to skip track this season and focus on the roads. I will be running the Bloomsday 12k on May 7th and look to follow this up with Peachtree on July 4th. I will likely select something between these races as well as something in the early fall. This will hopefully put me in position to have several months of 100+ mile weeks under my belt before building up for an early fall marathon. 

I truly appreciate all the support this last year and a half, and I am extremely anxious to turn all my training from the last half year into race results. Thanks for reading, and I'm looking forward to re-engaging with my blog!

Weeks to go: 4	AM	PM	Strength	Mileage
Monday	6 + drills and strides	1 hour aqua jog		6
Tuesday	Fartlek: (5 min, 4, 3)(4, 3, 2)(3, 2, 1) w/half recovery	5	40 minutes	17
Wednesday	14	off		14
Thursday	10 + drills and 150 meter strides	5	40 minutes	15
Friday	10	5		15
Saturday	3 miles, 2 miles, 1 miles (4:46 pace, 4:42, 4:39), rest = 3 min, 2 min	5	40 minutes	16
Sunday	18	off		18
TOTAL				101