Ready to Race!

I know my posts have been a bit sporadic the past several months, but my life has been very busy.  I've started a new job, bought a house, and have been working on planning a wedding with my fiancee.  Trying to squeeze in 90 miles a week with all that going on doesn't leave too much time for blogging about those miles.  All that aside, my training went very well as I prepared for the Philadelphia Half Marathon.

Last spring as I trained for the Vermont City Marathon, I was consistently putting in close to 110 miles per week.  I would have loved to keep my mileage at that level, but with everything going on, it would have just been too much for me.  I also don't necessarily think I need to run that many miles a week to succeed.  I have always loved running hard day in and day out.  Averaging low 6:00 pace for an entire week of distance runs is not uncommon.  When I was hitting over 100 miles a week, I was often too tired to train the way I preferred.  I believe toning down my volume to 80-90 miles a week with the intensity raised back to a level I prefer has the same benefits of training 110 miles a week.  I feel much fresher and don't feel like I am constantly on the verge of breakdown like I did this spring.

My expectations for the race this weekend are not extremely high, and I am not putting too much pressure on myself given the fact that I have had only 8 solid weeks of training leading into the race.  My training this summer got off to a late start due to how long it took me to recover from my spring races.  My legs did not feel good running until the end of August.  Part of this was due to over-racing in the spring and then taking on new responsibilities with my new company.  I spent much of July and August inspecting bridges in Maryland.  Being on your feet for 8 hours a day in the sweltering heat is not exactly good for the body's recovery!

But my body did finally come around, and my desire to train hard and race at a high level was as strong as it ever was.  My training was very simple.  I ran twice a day 3 or 4 times a week and took one day of decreased mileage.  My workouts were primarily aerobic - threshold pace intervals with short rest and tempo runs - and my training runs were run comfortably hard each day.  I believe this type of training has prepared me very well to race well for a half marathon.  I kept the rest very short on all of my workouts and felt very comfortable running at 5:00 to 5:05 pace.  I also touched on some shorter speed intervals at the end of my workouts and felt very quick which should serve me well for the later stages of the race when it's time to call on the fast twitch muscles to carry some of the load and keep me moving forward.