The Peak Before The Taper

So the Sham is March 20, or 5 weeks out. I hit max distance 2 weeks ago so by the time it's 2 weeks out I'll have done the distance, and most importantly, the time quite a few time. It also means speedwork is on the table. One of the things with heart rate training is that there are a LOT of miles where you are running well below race pace so fast running becomes foreign. Running by feel becomes slow because you "feel" fine. So speedwork is what's on the table. Essentially all runs from now on will be half MAF running and half race pace or better. Listening to the body so that I don't get injured. Speaking of which, the huge benefit of my current training is that I have totally avoided the injuries I usually have by now (usually knee pain but sometimes foot too).

What's also nice is that I now know my expected heart rates for different paces and supposedly I can keep out of the red at a pace that's about 20-30sec/mile faster than my target pace. This means there is a strong chance of a PR. We shall see.

Road To The Sham: Hitting Sevens

So we had a bit of warm weather which allowed me to run in less clothes. Mid 50s is great running weather and it showed. On a previous post I noted that my "street MAF" average time was 9:20/ mile. Well yesterday I ran a MAF of 8:16/mile with many dips into the 7s. I won't do a track test until March. The great thing here is that I'll likely be able to maintain my target speed at a low heart rate relative to last time. If so, I should be able to hit my PR. The one "problem" now is that I'm running faster than I intended to. I may end up having to actually slow down on purpose as to avoid injury as I'm now over 100 miles/month (which I've only done 3 times before).