Training Update

I've been keeping the mileage at around 40-45 miles per week this winter and focusing more on hitting quality workouts, and making sure I fully recover, than aiming for arbitrary mileage goals. That said I'm trying to keep my weekly long run at 12-14 miles to keep my aerobic strength. This past week I had three really good sessions: a 6-5-4-3-2-1 fartlek on hills on Tuesday, a 20-minute Tempo on Thursday @ 5:57 pace (6:10, 5:54, 5:47, plus 2:09), and an easy 13 miler on Saturday. I was especially pleased with the tempo because last fall I was doing mile repeats on that loop with 2:00 rest breaks only a tad faster than what I averaged with no rest. Today I ran a Moneghetti Fartlek (named after the famous Australian marathoner Steve Moneghetti). This workout consists of short surges at 5K effort with equal-time recovery 'floats' at about 1:00 per mile slower. Today's effort totaled 26-minutes (4 laps of the Lakewood Park mile loop, plus a bit more). I hit each mile right around 6:00 (my 4-mile split was 24:08). Very windy today so I think it's a good sign that my winter conditioning is going well.