Winter Base: Week 8

Decent week at 46.5 miles (one day off), bookended by great workouts on Monday and Saturday and feeling like crap while fighting off a cold on the middle days. On Monday I ran a really solid 9 mile progression, where the goal was to start at normal, easy run pace and drop 15 seconds per mile. I started at 8:00 and worked my way down, finishing the last 3 miles in 6:16, 6:02 and 5:43. The 5:43 felt especially smooth. I ran the workout on a mile loop with marked quarters, so while a little boring I was able to really carefully monitor my pace. Splits on that final mile were 87-87-87-82 Hopefully a good sign for my first race in 2 weeks. Felt a little crappy on the next day's recovery run and ended up taking Wednesday off all together, as I got pretty congested. By Friday I was more or less ok and today I did a 13.5 mile long run, feeling very good, so hopefully I'll be ready to roll next week. On Monday I'll do something like 5 x 5:00 w/3:00 rest and on Thursday I'll do the 16 x 200 workout that I missed last week due to my cold. Saturday will be a slightly shorter long run (90 minutes).