Putting in the miles

Well, now that I'm in the groove with the beginners' coursework at work, it is time to focus on putting the miles in. Thus far in the past few weeks I have done long runs with the Palo Alto Running Club (which I officially joined this week! hurray!) I had not, however, put in the day-to-day mileage that was going to be necessary to train for Chicago. So my new friend Marty from PARC sent me his spreadsheet of mileage and planned mileage. I also talked with CRC friend Pradeep about how his training was going. He tells me that he is putting in 40-50 mile weeks no problem. These factors combined led me to map out my own mileage plan.

While I'm sure I'll get more into the details later, the basic idea is for me to do my long weekend run with Marty, which can be anywhere from 10 to 20 miles. The remainder of the week I need to put in enough mileage to sustain a total of 40-50 miles. Fridays will be my rest day.

There's a monday night crowd of runners at work that are super fast. They're running 5-8 miles at 6:15/mile pace or faster. While I tried, there's just no way I can hang on when they're running that kind of sustained pace. It's something to aspire to, for sure. Evidently they've been going around winning several area relay races, and between people in the Mountain View, Seattle, and New York offices, they're assembling teams for various relay races across the US. After this marathon I might try to work on my speed and see if I can be a contributor to these events.. but the thought of being part of a team of runners who put in a sub-6/mile pace for, say, 200 miles, is very intimidating.

So in the past 5 days I've put in 39 miles. I've had a couple of sore spots while running, but largely I feel fine throughout the day after each run. This includes last Saturday, when I ran 14 miles. So I'm going to plow ahead. The real test will be this Saturday, when I run 20 miles, which will increase my longest distance run by a whopping 6 miles. Afterwards I will have to come straight back to my new place, because the movers will be moving in all of my stuff from Boston. No rest for the weary, 'eh?

This weekend will also mark the arrival of three different, non-overlapping sets of friends in the area, one of whom is crashing on my couch. I'm excited! More posts soon..