recovery day 7/12/06

time: 545pm,
temp: 90's,
route: 7 mile loop, then 5 strides, and higher opens, 50 crunches, 25 pushups and stretching
dist: 7 miles+ strides
Time: 52 min

Today was an easy recovery day, I felt sore in my upper butt muscles from wilkes yesterday, so started out very slow. In fact i made a very concious choice to run this one too slow. I was sorely tempted to speed up about 1.5 miles in when another runner (in my age group and who knows me) passed and ignored me as he went by, but i kept my cool and will relish handing him his ass on race day. Today was going to be pure recovery for me. I felt quite comfortable, and although a nagging pain above my R ankle on the front of my foot was bothersome for a while, it soon went away. Passed all the traffic on the 35 bridge and made it over to the north side of the trail in 15 minutes, and then just carried on this pace to about 800 meters out, where i picked it up. Still battling the mental stuff on these pickups. I have to go back and look at some writing on mental conditioning, i've forgotten how important that used to be in my training. I was surprized to see that i ran that loop in 52 because it felt quite easy and i thought i was cruising about a minute slower per mile than i was. This shows that the buildup is progressing and that i need to trust myself and my training. I was thinking today that i need to make a decision about my mileage for the fall, as a build up to a marathon. I believe in the benefits of high miles, but am not sure my ankle does as well. I guess i'll plan for my 2:45 next year, I may need a year of getting used to running with this arthritis issue. My goal for the fall DC races falls in ideal, realistic, satisfactory categories. Ideal is below 6 min pace average up to Austin marathon, realistic is at or below 6:15 pace up to austin marathon, satisfactory pace is at or below 6:30 pace up to marathon.
So there it is. the gauntlet is thrown. All i have to do know is figure out how to make that happen without injury. I think the key for the next month is to increase the mileage to above 50 and then start to hone in on the speed.