Not Quite Recovery Week

Although last week was supposed to be a recovery week I blew it out a bit over the weekend with my running.  ING is two weeks out so I had to get a long run yesterday, plus I had a Peachtree Road Race qualifier on Saturday, and a Brick scheduled for that day as well, so I am totally wiped out today.

Tuesday had a 1h ride, Wednesday got both the 1750m swim and a 6 miler in with some intervals, and Thursday got another 50 min ride in at lunch.  That was all according to the recovery week plan.  Friday I was scheduled for a swim/run, but only did the prescribed 1700m swim with a 10K race the next morning.  Since I was scheduled for 6 miles I just added it to Saturday.(more on the race in a moment)  Saturday got up early, ran the 10K in a PR time of 48:16, worked in the yard a bit then got onto the bike for a Brick of 1:15 ride/20 min run.  I was supposed to run for 30min, but needed to save some gas for Sundays long run.  On Sunday I did a nice slow 10 miler with some serious hills in the second half, and skipped the 1600m swim that was scheduled.  My wife was due to get in her long run as well, so it was my turn to watch the kiddos.  Even if that wasn’t the case, I had no gas in the tank for any more workouts.  On my normal triathlon plan I would only be running around 40 minutes anyway, so I went way over the necessary mileage.  I ended up on the weekend running about 18 miles and biking 22ish.  Only 2 weeks to go to the ING Half Marathon then my running volume will come back down some.  Good thing is that I will have a nice base for the 8 mile run at Alcatraz, and can limit my long runs to stretching the Sunday runs only.

I ran the Chattahoochee Road Runners 10K this weekend trying to get my time lower.  As mentioned earlier I have been trying to get down below 50 minutes on my 10K time for some time and came within 25 seconds a few weeks ago.  This time I had a good dinner the night before, and got to bed early.  My neighbor and I got there early and the weather was nice and sunny with temps in the mid 30’s,  This race is a popular qualifier for the Peachtree RR so there was a healthy field of 844 in the 10K.  The course was rolling out and back with the final half mile taking a turn and pretty much downhill all the way.  I came across the line in 48:16 (7:47 min/mile) which is good for me.  This was also good for 244th place so about 28th% in a pretty competitive local field.  All that running since last year seems to be paying off, and I am enjoying these races.