Less than three weeks left until the big day — eek!  I’m both nervous and excited, but generally feeling good.  To make up for some of my training set backs during the last couple of weeks, I’ve decided to add an extra day of running each week into my schedule until race day.  I’m based in Berlin for a couple of weeks, so here is what I had on my training plan this past week:

• Monday: Core strength training
• Tuesday: 4 miles
• Wednesday: Speed training: 9 x 400 meters (5K race pace)
• Thursday: Lower body strength training
• Friday: 4.5 miles
• Saturday: rest
• Sunday: 10 miles

More or less, the reality pretty much matched my plan, except that my long run got moved from Sunday to Monday.  It will make Week 10 training a bit tougher, but so it goes.  Anyway, here’s what I did:

• Core training. Good stuff.  Again, for core I used this video.
• 4-mile run.  A sunny morning in Berlin and I knocked out the run a whole six minutes faster than last week, without it even feeling hard.  How?  No freaking idea.  I would have thought that missing almost an entire week of running would have slowed me down.  But maybe my legs just needed the break?
• Speed training: 9 x 400 meters (>5K race pace).  There is a track I could use for the 400-meter intervals, but it’s just a tad too far away to be useful for me, so I decided on a spot with a nice long stretch with few obstacles and fewer people.  I started with a 15-minute warm up run, and then began running the intervals: 400 meters fast (for me), 2 minutes easy jog/fast walk, repeat 8 more times.  My plan was a 9:30 pace (approximately my 5K race pace), but I found myself running more like a 9:00 pace and it felt good (Paula Radcliffe and Deena Kastor can rest assured that I won’t be breaking any of their records), so I decided to keep it up as long as I could.  Of special note during my intervals: I got to pass a herd of the ugliest, mangiest camels I’ve ever seen, chilling out in the urban semi-wasteland of East Berlin where I was training.  Not sure what the deal was with them, but whatever.  I did my last interval uphill (note: that sucks), and then wound down with a 10-minute cool down run home.   All in all, pretty satisfying, but I was totally exhausted for the rest of the day.
• Lower body strength training.  For leg training, I used the video from this post and instructions from the same trainer as the core workout video.  The workouts have you repeating the videos up to three times, so when the commentary starts driving me nuts, I mute it.
• 4.6-mile run.  My legs definitely felt tired by Friday, but I still managed to churn out this short run.  Not quite so fast as on Tuesday, but still faster than the previous weeks.
• 10.3-mile run.  I started off pretty strong, but slowed down towards the end.  Overall, I was about half-a-minute per mile slower than my last long run (but still faster than the long runs before that).  I guess given that my last long run was three weeks ago (damn cold and stiff neck!), I shouldn’t be too surprised.  But still, I can’t help but be disappointed.  Hopefully next week’s long run will go a bit better.

Any lessons to be gleaned?  I seem to have been able to bounce back pretty well from my (unplanned) days off from training.  Awesome.  Second, while treadmills definitely serve their purpose, I love running outdoors about 100 times more.  Working from home, I’ve been doing morning runs outdoors during daylight hours — hurray!   I think I underestimate myself when setting the running speed on treadmills, but running on pavement I can simply let loose and push a bit without letting the numbers get to my head.

P.S. Inspired by a number of running blogs that I’ve recently started reading (Ali on the Run, Mile Posts, Run the Long Road, The Girl That Runs), I added a Races page to my site.    Check it out if you’re crazy enough to be interested in a quick overview of the races I’ve run, plus links to the race recaps.

P.P.S. I’ve been loving Daily Mile lately, which mixes tracking your workouts with social networking and community support.  If you use Daily Mile too, let me know!

Related posts: