Nov 8

FIT:
It feels good to nail a workout.  Knees felt like they needed a strength session for the hips today.  I think that'll help.  But my heart was wanting some cardio by evening.  The training plan calls for 2... that's low.  It also calls for 8 Wed and 16 Sat.  There must be something to having something relatively high, that they'll go as low as 2 on Monday.  Or the formula/optimizers that they use could be under such unreasonable constraints (3:40 marathon on 25-30 mi/wk at the peak) that it's just throwing out workouts that may be unreasonable... it's been the most doable and seemingly effective marathon training plan that I've seen so far, though.  BTW, it's the Runner's World iTouch app sponsored by New Balance.  SmartCoach I think is the name.  The Hanson's beginner program had crazy mileage... up to 47, and ridiculous increases... totally breaking the 10% rule.  Other plans weren't as bad, but they were still too high in mileage.  Jack Daniels' probably works, but the workouts are tough... like I'd be doing race-effort workouts three times a week.  With RW, it doesn't really specify paces, so I just do what's comfortable, and I feel fine about modifying the distances... I keep the weekly total about where they want, I just shuffle mileage around a bit in the first two workouts.

So this is like the last interval session I did, which I was very excited about, since it was a decent step up from what I could do previously.  It's been 9 days since the half, so it's almost safe for me to do intervals again... it went fine.  Wore the Kinvaras again... oh, it was b/c of that that I remembered that I could do a speed session.  I was originally going to do a short base run.  Speed was perfect to do instead.  The shorter runs are the perfect op to do something intense, and I was wanting cardio.

1 mi warmup, 4x[.5 @ 9mph, .25 @ 7.5mph].  4.0 in 29:54, 7:29 ave.  Nice.  Tread 1 degrees.

Had to make my steps smaller... kinda hard when you're going fast... to keep that knee from complaining during the end of the pushoff phase.  My right leg is stiffer than my left leg.  It's bad that it' stiff, but that probably makes its form better than the left foot's, which kind of lands with the toe turned out too much, I think.  Eh, nothing really hurting, at least.

Calves were sore today.  Means I'm doing something!  The last rep was a challenge... the rest were okay.  That's probably a good place to be, if one wants to keep it safe.  Just realized (maybe I realized it last time, though), that this workout is the start of the Yasso 800 test!  4/10-12.  Could I finish it off if I wanted to?  Maybe.  Let's see... if I could hold it for another 6, it would predict a 3:21 finish... perfect!  That is precisely what the charts predict.  And normally, you wouldn't have to run these in 75 degrees.  That may balance out my optimism about being able to do another 6.  And I normally probably wouldn't need to do 7.5mph for the rest intervals... that's pretty fast for rest.  Yay.  Happy.