I did my normal 4.5 mile loop last night and it felt wonderful. No soreness or looseness while running, and nothing last night or this morning. The plan is to do a 10 miler on Sunday and use it as a diagnostic. If I can do it alright and recover w/o problems, I can do the 1/2. If I have any problems at all, I'm out. I'm ok with that decision, I'd rather skip the race and keep going in my recovery than run the race and not be able to run for most of December.
Looking back, I'm amazed at what a difference in conditioning that training for a 1/2 has made. I used to run short distances really regularly. I *knew* that speed work would make me faster, but when you are used to running 4.5 miles and topping off at a 10K, it's really easy to fall back into normal patterns and not push the speed. I also didn't have an incentive to run long distances, and I was scared of them, so I didn't bother. I'm really impressed at what a difference adding slow, long miles has made in my running conditioning. It seems somewhat counter-intuitive, but the long slow runs really increased my stamina, form, and improved just about every part of my running.
Once I'm recovered from my knees and the race on Dec 11 I'm going to re-evaluate my running plan. I really want to maintain the long runs and I think I've found a similarly-paced trail-running partner to do that with. I also want to add speed play (with Luke) and serious cross training and strength building. Ideally I'll keep running 4 days a week with one long run and one speed run (is that too much? should I alternate long run/speed work every other week?), and do at least 1 day of additional short cardio and strength training.
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