Week Summary 12/19 - 12/25

12-19-2011
Mon - XT / playground circuits

12-20-2011
Tue - 1:00 AM

12-21-2011
Wed - :52 AM

12-22-2011
Thurs - 1:58 AM

If I didn’t keep looking down at my watch and see today’s date, I would have never guessed it was the first day of winter. A toasty 60 degrees on a run around the city. There’s something to be said about running past the Christmas tree in Rock Center in nothing but a tank and shorts... comfortably -- global warming?? or maybe just an early gift of peak winter training weather?

12-23-2011
Fri - :30 AM // PG circuits

Legs were feeling good today so I decided to take them out on a light rest day spin before getting in some solid circuit training. I’m praying I don’t overtrain and sideline myself with an IT band injury like I’ve done before. Knock on wood.

12-24-2011
Sat - 2:08 PM

12-25-2011
Sun - 3:40 PM

Long run fell on Christmas Day, but got to hit the road/trails with my new Garmin 610 gps watch. Seriously an awesome piece of technology and now it will be much easier to track overall mileage and elevation gains, especially on random routes in the trails when the daily focus is quality time on the feet. After yesterday's mid-long run at a grueling pace, I was really feeling the fatigue in the legs pretty early on today, however. These back-to-back long training runs on the weekends are great, but man do they teach your legs to perform on a beating. On that note, Merry Christmas! now get out and run (or recover!)

Week Totals: 10h 08m

Overall, another great week with more unusually warm weather. Solid weekly mileage (about 70 miles or so for the week) and good time on the feet. The legs are still feeling great despite a sharp increase in training on the trails, but I am definitely looking forward to a nice recovery schedule next week. I’ll probably cut back about 10 miles/90 minutes of training to keep the legs fresh before upping the mileage even more as I start climbing into the peak training weeks before Bel Monte (just over 12 weeks away!) I’ve been mixing up the terrain a good amount, but I’ll have to incorporate some more mountain training in on the weekends when I have the time in order to mimic the terrain I’ll be tackling in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Speaking of which -- here’s an old favorite to fit the occasion: