Success is in the air! Week of Apr 21-Apr 27 in Review

If you thought the last post detailed a good week, then this post will detail what I considered an even better week. Our goal this week was to run every day of the week, have one double, one good tempo run, and an excellent long run!  The week started off extremely well. I was fortunate to get to run with Kimi over lunch every day this week. We had some solid 8 and 9 mile runs near 6:50 mile pace. nailed our double on Tuesday just like we had planned. Wednesday followed with another solid run, which brings me to Thursday and our workout day.

*The Workout* The goal was a 4 mile tempo run with each mile right at or slightly under 6 min pace. This would bring us in at just under 24 minutes. If you would have asked either of us prior to the workout just how we thought it would turn out, neither of us would have guessed what resulted. We did our two mile warm up and then gathered ourselves. We looked at each other with one last attempt to gather confidence from the other and then counted down. 3-2-1-Go! The timer's were started and we were on our way. We came through the first half mile on pace to run a 5:52 which I just assumed would slowly creep up closer to 6min. It didn't! We rolled through the second mile in the exact same time and then began the third mile which is slightly more uphill. Much to my surprise, the pace never climbed above 5:55 during the entire uphill portion of the mile. After clipping off a 3rd mile at 5:51, I got rather excited for the finishing result. I looked at Kimi and chuckled a bit, "let's make this an epic finish!"  We increased the intensity a bit and were now holding strong at 5:45 pace through the first half mile of our 4th mile. The intensity picked up some more and now with only a quarter to go, we were on pace for a 5:42.  I looked at Kimi and said, "we can still break 5:40!"  We dug deeper and cranked up the intensity even more. We managed to clip off a 5:38 by the finish and were both very excited about the workout.  Perhaps this would be the workout that we will both look back at and remember as the turning point in our 2014 training cycle.

Next up was the task of having an awesome long run.  We headed out to Willard Saturday morning be since I had some friends that were running the Railroad 8k.  Our goal was to get there early enough to try and time it up where we could see my friends finish and possibly help one of them on to the end.  We didn't get started quite early enough to finish with him but we did get to cheer both of my friends on during their run as we were running in opposite directions in the later part of our run. We switched it up and decided to run towards Springfield first. It's about 6 miles to Spf making it 12 miles when we arrived back to Willard. All we had to do was run out 2.5 miles and turn around and go back to the car at this point. Of course, the last 2 miles are usually the toughest 2 miles simply due to fatigue, but on this particular run, we were rolling and clipping off a consistent sub 6:50 per mile pace until the wind picked up and made the last two miles tough. With our determination to finish the goal of an excellent long run, we dug deep and kept pressing onward. We managed to keep the final two miles under 7 min against the wind and finished our 17 mile run with a pretty stellar average of 6:51 per mile. FINALLY, we had the type of long run we had grown accustomed to during our 2013 marathon training adventures.

*Sunday was an adventure all in itself. It took us all day to get the texturing finished in our living room, kitchen, and guest bathroom. * Now just to get it painted and get some new floors. :)

Goals:
67 miles
1 workout
17 mile long run

Actual:
67 miles
1 - 4 mile tempo - 23:20!
17 mile long run!