Busy Week = Mileage High

Well, this week sure was chock full of running goodness. I have my sons to thank for pushing me to a new weekly mileage personal record. I won't recount all of the running, but will just say that the activity schedule for one kid and the request by the other to take him to the track meant that I finished ten runs this week for a grand total of 83.5km (51.9 miles). A new PB by 3km.

This morning I went out for the final run of the week: the all important long run. I woke up at 7am, felt like death and actually managed to fall asleep again, then woke up at just before 9am completely surprised at the time. I NEVER manage to fall back asleep once I wake up at a decent hour so this was weird. I knew it was supposed to start raining mid morning and so I got up fast and got ready to go. I was out the door and running at 9:21 and decided on a whim to run a loop I had done a few times last year which includes a big climb out of the Don Valley up Beechwood Drive.

I was not feeling all that hot and just wanted to run a nice easy pace, make it up the hill a couple of times without collapsing, and get through a decent amount of mileage to finish off the week. As has become a bit of a regular occurrence the run went way better than I thought it would.

After the first couple of kilometres of warm up type running I settled into a nice pace in the 5:00/km range (8:00/mile) and usually pulled of splits starting with the number 4. There was some sort of a small race using the same trail that I was running on, but the first time I came around the racers had not come by yet so I had the trail to myself. I hit the climb up Beechwood at about the 8km mark and managed to get up the hill at a decent pace and, more importantly, I kept on running upon reaching the top and got my pace back to the average within a short amount of time. Nice! I knew the second time up the climb would be tougher, but I didn't slow my pace in anticipation of this eventuality in an effort to conserve energy.

The second time around the trail I hit a large number of racers and proceeded to pass them all as I maintained my 5:00/km, give or take 5 seconds, pace. The second climb up Beechwood was indeed tougher, but I once again managed to crest the top and continued to run while my heart rate and pace got back to normal. It was then that the drizzle that had been happening the entire run turned to a regular downpour. I was soaked for the last 6km of the run as I ran along the Danforth to complete my 24km for the day. By the time I got home certain parts of my body were raw and chaffed; not fun.

But it was a great run! The average pace in the end was 5:02/km (8:05/mile) and included those two big climbs. My last kilometre was my fastest as I tried to push through to the end and was a nice 4:34/km. I also took note that I crossed the Half Marathon mark in 1:46:36.

The elevation profile for the run was worth noting as well:

So, another week done. Feeling pretty much back to normal, although my legs are stiff from getting back to weight training, and looking forward to the rest of the month with two races coming up in May.