Just one week till Miami

I'm just one week out from my first Olympic race of the year, and I'm really excited. Even though there is still snow on the ground here in Western PA, I know that spring is right around the corner, and that means race season is right around the corner as well!

So with only one week before my first race, coach decides to give me two hard workouts to do this weekend. Well first off, this week by far is my longest training week of the year just shy of 20 hours. In addition I've logged a weekly high 61 miles of running. Not too shabby! So now for the weekend recap.

Yesterday started off as normal with a large helping of Jen's now famous whole wheat blueberry waffles topped with almond butter and pure maple syrup! By far my favorite meal of the week! After our food digested we came to the conclusion that the weather here in the Burgh just isn't going to get any better. We packed on our layers, tights, gloves, and hat for a long 16 mile run. Coach wanted me to negative split the run on an out and back course. The first five miles when by pretty quick, and the weather was cooperating with me. The wind was at my back, and there wasn't any rain....yet. But with less than 6 miles into my run the rain started to come down. By mile 7 the rain turned to sleet and I could barely open my eyes, yet I kept moving on. Now by mile 9, I was extremely sick of the sleet pounding off of my uncovered face, and the weather gods must of heard me. Not long after mile 10, what was sleet now was a winter wonderland of giant snow flakes. I mean the snow flakes were so big that my black shirt looked white only after a couple minutes. By now all I wanted to do was get home. Unfortunately there weren't any shortcuts except for the way I came. I put one foot ahead of the other and tried to pick up the pace, but by now it was useless. The headwind was brutal, and there was absolutely no way of negative splitting this run. I was about 14 seconds slower per mile on the way back, but was happy to survive the Saturday afternoon weather extravaganza. Saturday night we headed to the pool for a cool 3K yards. Nothing too exciting to report here. :)

Sunday morning marked the start of a long brick workout. Horray, my first brick of the day and I'M YET AGAIN STUCK INDOORS ON THIS STUPID TRAINER!!! My friend Drew came over around 9:30 this morning, and kept me company for 3 hours. We popped in a Spinerval (Tough Love)...you got to just love the names of those DVD's, and biked till we were blue in the face. After the 3:15 bike it was time for a speedy transition and out to the freezing cold. It's really a shock at first coming from a hot stuffy indoor basement where the average temperature is well above 70 degrees, to a frigid outdoor run where the temp is in the 20's. I clicked off a six mile run with all miles at sub 7 pace, and even a couple at sub 6:40 pace.

So what does the rest of today bring for me you ask? Sleep, rest, and FOOOOOD!!!

posted by Chad Holderbaum @ 5:37 PM Comments: 1