This last week was another rocky week of ups and downs. One hundred miles of running and 4 hours on the PCs. Balancing family, work, and training time can only be done by compromising sleep. Its all starting to wear me down a little now that I'm going into my 5th week of hard training. The hardest workouts are still to come. I plan on sustaining this peak training workload until the beginning of October. Three more weeks of 100 mile weeks and then I get to ease it down slowly over the final 4 weeks.

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I finally kicked the cold I had. That being said, I'm still not feeling like I'm running any faster because of it, but its  nice to have that little annoyance done with. I can at least sleep  better now.
 
This last week was another rocky week of ups and downs. One hundred  miles of running and 4 hours on the PCs. Balancing family, work, and training time can only be done by compromising sleep. Its all starting  to wear me down a little now that I'm going into my 5th week of hard training.  The hardest workouts are still to come. I plan on sustaining this peak training workload until the beginning of October.  Three more weeks of 100 mile weeks and then I get to ease it down slowly over the final 4 weeks.

When I told Frank that my wife, a more recreational runner than me, was using the PCs also, he said to observe her to see how to better use the power cranks. With that in the back of my mind, I ask her all the time how things are going, how her runs are feeling. Occasionally we'll go do a short run together. This last week we were talking after one of her runs about how it had gone. She described in great eloquence what I could not. She said that her legs want to go faster but cardio wise she can't maintain the pace through the entire run comfortably. She notices that she starts out at; faster clip than she used to because that's what the legs want to do; but that by the end she has to slow down because she gets tired. That is how I feel too but couldn't quite put my finger on it since I'm logging tons of miles and feel tired all the time. I'm either doing a hard run or trying to recover from speed work or a long so I don't have a baseline to with which to compare. It makes sense when you think about it. My PC workouts are barely in the aerobic range and I'm mostly working on high RPM, no upper body or arm work. Running requires more use of more muscles of the body than cycling does. Riding the PC is conditioning only part of all the muscles used while running. Running efficiently involves more than just the leg turnover. So it feels like the rest of the body needs to catch up to the legs to truly see the desired benefit of the increased leg turnover.

Taking that into account I notice that my very aerobic jogging workouts are going better than the maximum effort speed work sessions.  Last weekend I had a great 20 mile long run. I ran my usual loop faster than last week and felt fresher doing it. I'm sure that this time was the fastest I've ever run that loop. This is all very unscientific because I usually just take note of my times for the loop I'm not  actually trying to set any records or hit any specific times for this  20 mile run each weekend. I\'m also way inside my aerobic range and  still running 45 sec slower than even my marathon pace.   There can be several other explanations to this feeling like: it was only 65 deg instead of the usual 70 deg during this weekends run; I have been running 100 mile weeks plus hitting the PC for 40 min per day at 100RPM so there is some  increased aerobic fitness; my speedwork sessions are finally paying off in everyday training; I am finally over my cold that I've had for 2 weeks.  There are so many factors that can explain this its hard to say its one thing or another specifically. Still it's interesting to note that the body wants to turn the legs over faster  during normal training now regardless if my cardio system and mental state wants to keep up.

 I don't always have good runs though. The day after the usual  Saturday 22 miler (2 mile cool down after 20 miles = 22 total miles + 40 min PC @100rpm at night) I do another 20 mile run to get used to being tired and work on my endurance. Last weekend on Sunday after my good Saturday long  run I just dragged and the legs really didn't want to run that fast.  When I relaxed I could clip along at just under 7 min pace but when I  thought about how much longer there was and that I was tired I would  slow down. That's the mental part of marathon racing you have to condition yourself for-- keeping your head in the game until the end.

It's always hard doing back to back long runs. With family commitments I don't just sit around for the remainder of  the day and get to rest. We usually have a soccer game to go to,  house chores, and general fun running around after the kids. AAhhh, I  remember the days in college where we'd go for a long ride then sit  around all day watching videos or doing homework, maybe even take a  nap. Boy a nap in the middle of the day, wouldn't that be nice.
 
This upcoming week will be interesting. I have my first scheduled 10-12 mile  marathon pace run. I don't care about running fast on my slow days, I care about running fast in the races. This will be the first real  test if all the work so far is paying off.  Since MP is supposed to be right below the anaerobic threshold (marathon pace is supposed to be  99% aerobic, ha, ha) it will be interesting to see if the same feeling of fast leg turnover from the long runs transitions over to this faster aerobic pace. I'm definitely not noticing any significant improvements during my 3k and 5k workouts yet vs. my old training logs for the same point in training from previous marathons.  
 
Let the real marathon training begin!!

Some interesting reading:

http://www.me.utexas.edu/~neptune/Papers/job39(11).pdf

http://www.thefinalsprint.com/2006/12/running-vs-cycling