December 31-January 6

Wow!! Another week in the books. HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!
This has been a GOOD, but tiring week of training. This was my first week on the new training schedule. I also started adding something new this week to my blog, my running routes. I did not input Monday's run, but as you can see, I did show the rest of the weeks runs. I used this website (usatf.org) to map out most of my courses. I do it for a couple of different reasons: 1) it shows the amount of mileage covered and 2) it shows me the elevations of the many hills that I will run. This week was a WHOLE lot of running, but I was pretty surprised how fresh I felt at the beginning of each run. I must say Wednesday's run really scared me because it was a very hard workout and I really felt it afterwards. The hills just seemed to keep coming and I did not realize the hills were so loooong! At any rate, I was able to finish the hilly run and my time was not too bad either. That being said, my run on Thursday was not the best. Whew!! It was truly a tough run. I ran the same course a couple of weeks ago about 10 minutes faster, so Thursday's time was not as bad as I make it sound. Actually, I was rather surprised at my time. Also, the course should have been a very flat course and as you can see, it was not. Saturday's run went better than expected because I felt pretty tired and once I started running I really warmed up and finished pretty strong.

The new schedule for the month of January is the following:

Monday: 10 miles at 1/2 effort
Tuesday: 15 miles at 1/4 effort
Wednesday: 12 miles at 1/2 effort over hilly course
Thursday: 18 miles at 1/4 effort
Friday: REST
Saturday: 22 miles at 1/4 effort
Sunday: 15 miles at 1/4 effort
**After this weeks training, I think I will make some modifications**

Here are this weeks results:

Sunday: Unable to run
Monday: 10 mi/1:21:58/41:57-out/40:00-in
Tuesday: 15 mi/2:01:39**(to view this route, copy and paste this link: http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=96561
Wednesday: 12 mi/1:39:16/49:07-out/50:08-in/very hilly course**(to view this route, copy and paste this link:
http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=96795
Thursday: 18 mi/2:40:30/1:15:12-out/1:25:18-in/**(to view this route, copy and paste this link:
http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=97307
Friday: REST
Saturday: 19 mi/2:36:06/**(to view this route, copy and paste this link:
http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=97747
Mileage: 74

As you can see, I definitely increased my miles from previous weeks. I am actually pretty surprised at how fresh I felt even though I ran so many miles. I was not quite as fresh as I have been in previous weeks, but the key is to keep putting the miles in so that my body can continue to adjust and prolong the lactic acid buildup. Obviously, this is happening because I am not nearly as sore as previous weeks and the muscles really don't start getting tired until the later miles.

KEEP RUNNING!!
LJ