Last week

After the disappointing race last Sunday, I was worried that I was inexplicably losing fitness in a major way. So with those concerns in my mind, I started another 100 mile+ week...and was pleasantly surprised:) Every workout was better than the one before it. It was amazing. When I first bumped my mileage up, my average workout pace had declined to what could only be defined as plodding. It was a good day if I could do 6:00/k, and it was quite usual for a recovery run to start off at 7:00/k and get slower from then on. It'd gotten better to some extent, but I was still running most workouts in the upper 5s.

But last week, I felt supercharged. Every workout became a progression run. I'd start out quite slowly (but still faster than I used to manage) and every lap would get faster. I even got into the habit of going for it in the last km because I just felt so awesome. The tempo run was rather unimpressive, but the rest of the week more than made up for it. I ended up doing 185km, the most I've ever done, at an average pace of 5:23:)

The long run on Sunday was probably the best part. For quite a while, I'd been meaning to get up to 30k runs, because there's a 30k race I want to do a bit later in the year. The thing is, I limit my long runs to around 2 and a half hours, so if I wanted to get that kind of distance in, I'd have to do 5:00/k the whole way. I figured there'd be no way I'd be able to do that, because my previous best for a long run was in the 5:30 range. I was pleasantly surprised to finish the course I'd mapped out in 2:34 - 5:09 pace. I was on track to do 5:00/k for the first hour, but dropped off a bit in the middle of the run with a stitch. It felt like I'd slowed down heaps, but after I reached my turn back point, I realised I was still in there with a chance and gave it everything I had. It was a real confidence boosting workout, even if it did hurt quite a bit.

This week, I haven't been able to run much because I must've buggered up my foot during the rollerblading after the long run on Sunday and the recovery run the next day just aggravated it. But I've been on the cross trainer, and I think I'll be right to do my tempo run tomorrow morning:)

Speaking of which, I'll be doing it in my new shoes:D I ordered three pairs of shoes from the US (runnerswarehouse.com.au) for less than $300 - about half the price of what I would've paid in Australia. So I'm now kitted out with a really funky pair of ultralight Mizuno wave revolver 5s that I'll use for racing and tempo runs, and two more pairs of Brooks ST3 Racers, which I'll use for training.

I've really got into the idea of training in racing flats. They feel so much better than built up running shoes. I can actually feel the ground when I run, so my feet know where to position themselves as they hit the surface. Running on concrete with them would be suicide of course, but running on concrete is suicide whatever shoes you wear. I rarely leave my little 2k trail out the back of my house and if I do have to venture elsewhere, I run on the nature strip.