As I began to type up this week’s training, I was feeling pretty “meh” about it. I think the doldrums of a long training cycle has kicked in and I’m getting into a routine that made it hard for me to see that it was actually a solid week of running…I mean, it included a negative split track workout, an almost 2 minute PR in the 10k, and my highest mileage of the year!

Mon 8/31- 10 easy miles followed by an ART/chiropractic visit with Dr. Jenna to work on my left Achilles and ankle.

Tue  9/1- 10 more easy miles on the Cottonwood trails in Spartanburg. The range of motion in my left ankle was MUCH improved after the work on it yesterday.

Wed 9/2- Today’s track workout was 3x2mile with ~5 min recovery. I managed to negative split the sets, but I didn’t get quite as fast as I wanted on the last one: 13:15, 13:02, 12:54. The average was 6:31 pace which was pretty much dead on the goal (6:30), so I’ll take it.

Thu 9/3- 8 slow miles. It was about 95* so I was happy to back off and just put in the miles.

Fri 9/4- 10 miles with Midnight Flight 10k in a new PR of 41:28 (chip time) –my old PR was 43:15 from 2014’s Reedy River Run! It was good enough for third place woman and $100 payday, but I’m kind of frustrated…I have this newfound fitness/speed, but I still don’t really know how to be a racer, if that makes sense? It’ll come, I hope.

Sat 9/5- 8 miles to shake everything out mid-morning. Night races make everything weird for a couple of days.

Sun 9/6- 18 miles in the afternoon with a negative split second half. I guess it’s a good sign when my long run is the most uninteresting hard workout of the week.

Total: 74 miles

I’ve been stepping back my mileage every third week, which should be next week, but we are switching things up and keeping the miles in the mid-upper 70s again. I seem to be holding together well enough, and I have the first 20 miler of the cycle to run so it makes sense to just roll with it for another week…