Training Report: February 26 - March 11

Long time, no update so I'll start off by saying that I ran a masters PR for 5 miles in my first race of the year on Saturday, March 10 at the St. Malachi 5 miler. My time was 29:36, which was 39 seconds faster than I ran last year in the same race on the same course in similar weather conditions (upper 40s and somewhat windy). The training has been going really well. I reduced my mileage a bit over the last two weeks to sharpen up a little and that seemed to get me into race mode. On the week of February 26-March 4 I ran 52 miles with two quality workouts. 3 x 1.5 miles in 9:00 with 45 seconds rest between reps on the Wednesday and a 16 miler on Saturday.

The week of the race I ran 40 miles with one day off (only my second missed day of 2007) with 5 x 800 in 2:50 three days before the race with 60 seconds rest between reps. It was 22 and windy outside that day so I did the workout in sweats and training flats. The weather magically got better by the weekend and the race couldn't have gone better. I ran my usual Alan Culpepper style conservative race at the beginning and blasted the last two miles. My splits were 6:05, 5:53, 6:04 (big hill), 5:52, 5:42 (up hill finish).