What a week! "Is it go time yet?!" June 2 - June 8

The week started off tough following our 24 miler which if you recall, didn't go the greatest.  Monday and Tuesday were recovery days and I definitely used them as such. I went a grand total of 12 miles over the two days. One Wednesday, we managed to get back closer to normal. We decided because the weather was being reasonably cool, that we'd wait until the evening to go up to the Frisco trail and put in a solid 8 mile run. The 4 miles on the way out weren't great but on the way back, we really got it rolling. We managed to keep all 4 return miles under 6:45 including the last mile which we ducked under 6:30 on while doing some strides. Thursday was our next scheduled workout which was to be hill repeats. It had been quite rainy that afternoon so when we started down the South Creek Greenway trail, it was simply puddle after puddle and walk after walk in order to get through without completely soaking the shoes.  Finally, we managed to get the 2.5 mile warm up completed on our way to a new hill we were going to try using for hill repeats. Ever since we moved from Republic into Springfield, we haven't really found a good hill to use for hill repeats. Thankfully, this particular hill was right at a quarter mile long which is exactly what we were looking for. The purpose of hill repeats is to run them at a reasonably hard pace but not necessarily all out in order to build strength and make flatter courses just feel easier. This almost always does the trick and it definitely did this time too (I'll explain that in just a minute).  We ran up the hill 8 times before we called it quits and started to make the 2.75 mile trip back home (decided to take a different route to avoid the water on the trail).

Friday is always our easy day so we simply trotted an easy 3 miles and that's it.

Saturday was to be our toughest workout during this entire training cycle. Yasso 800's were on the schedule and this was our first ever attempt at this particular workout. Yasso 800's are meant to be a good gauge of what you're capable of during a marathon. The workout goes a little like this. If you would like to run a 3 hour marathon, you do 10 x 800m repeats on the track in 3:00 (min:sec) with 3 min recovery between each repeat. If you'd like to run a 2:40 (hr:min) marathon time, you should run 2:40(min:sec) per repeat with the recovery of 2:40 (min:sec) between each. Kimi and I both have slightly different goals for our marathon but only by a couple minutes. With that in mind, we set out to run the monster workout with a goal pace of 2:40 (min:sec) or slightly under per 800m repeat.  Let me back up just a bit more. Friday night, we checked the weather.com app on my phone and looked at the hourly forecast. We were supposed to be good to go Saturday morning from about 6:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. without any major storm issues. Boy were they wrong. We just started to head out the door when, "bang!" the thunder and lightning hit and the sky opened up with rain. We went back inside and decided to wait it out and perhaps try again in the afternoon if we had to. Only an hour later, we looked outside, the wind seemed slightly calmer and the sun was shining. I looked at Kimi and said, "you ready to go give it a shot?"  We got dressed and headed back out for attempt #2. This time with much better success!

So just how did the workout go? It was phenomenal! By no means was it an easy task but we hit the first two at 2:40 and then dropped them down to 2:38 for the rest except for the last one at 2:37! I was pumped and excited about the accomplishment.

Sunday was also a great run. We nailed 15 miles just cruising along. It did start a little slow but that's to be expected after the workout we had the day before!

All I can say at this point is, "is it go time yet?!"

Goal Mileage - 60mi
Actual - 58mi
Goal Workouts - Smoke some 800's
Actual - Did just that!