Training Plans- more like guidelines really!

Well, the goal for last week was to hit 54 total miles and of course do so in 7 days of running. The week started off strong with a good but not great 8 miles on Monday. Tuesday, which was supposed to be another 8 miles, turned into 7 due to the cold temperatures. Wednesday, I'll be honest, lazy Marshall took over and so I didn't run at all. Unfortunately, Thursday morning included frigid temperatures again, but this time, we bundled up and made it 7 miles. Friday would again prove to be no good. This was not the week I had in mind after how excellent the week before was. Thankfully, the weather made a turn for the better on Saturday and Sunday. We headed up to the Frisco Trail Saturday morning for what I thought was going to be our long run with a workout in the middle of it. After a nice 3 mile warm-up, the intentions were to complete a 4 mile tempo run and then finish up to 14 miles with a nice easy 7 miles afterwards. The tempo run part went just as planned keeping all 4 miles under 6 minute pace. However, our remaining 7 was cut short due to simple fatigue. So, all in all, we decided to call it quits at 11 miles and do a solid long run on Sunday morning. Saturday afternoon we got to spend some time at the in-laws house where we watched the second half of the Mizzou basketball game and then put in the movie Lincoln (a rather slow but still interesting movie).

As Sunday morning rolled around, we were looking forward to having a solid 12 mile run.  So where do we go when we want to have this type of smooth sailing run? Frisco Trail, of course. The run started out extremely promising. We had a first mile near 6:50 which was also into the wind. Then we started rolling along in the mid 6:50's. After how well our long run went the week before, this long run turned out to be nothing special. It was just a good solid run.

Surprisingly enough, even without running two days last week, we still managed to have a reasonable week of 45 miles. It wasn't exactly as I planned out for our training, but really, training plans are more like guidelines anyways.I've decided that things will be easier when we move into our new house (closing on it this week!) because we will be able to run under the street lights rather than in pitch black with only head lamps to light the way.

Goal Mileage - 54
Actual - 45
1 workout = 4 mi tempo run