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- run 52:18, 10.00 km w/ 5 x 20s strides
suddenly hot, 82/28 degrees. HR way up, but also just ran this a little too fast. gonna be warm again tomorrow morning for my penultimate Big Workout, but at least not quite this warm. same deal next weekend, as well. almost close enough to race day to start obsessively checking the forecast for toledo, ohio.

oh i know, it seems nutty to me as well, and i'm not actually gonna start doing HIIT. actually, in his defense, when i talked to davis, the two strength things he recommended were heavy hamstring work (RDLs or similar) and heavy calf raises. but sledgehammer slams and the like are just so fun.

- run 58:33, 10.45 km
legs a bit flat, average HR quite low (118) for what was not an unusually slow run (5:36 average).

i rediscovered/remembered ross enamait the other day. saw an article by john davis about strength training for running and that basically recommends circuit training, and it brought rossboxing right to mind. his blog is still up, so i was looking through the archives. got me itching to find a truck tire and buy a sledgehammer, lol.

- half marathon race in 1:28:38 (official), 1:28:10 (watch)
PR'd by over two minutes and followed my pacing plan faithfully: conservative for the first 6 km (4:16 average), middle 10 km right around target pace (4:12 average, against a target of 4:14), then over the final 5 km i literally ran sub-20. felt incredible. caught and passed about a dozen people in the final two miles.

RPE 9.5, i crossed the line feeling almost like i was going to throw up but in retrospect i know i could have started cutting pace down earlier and probably run 1:27:xx at least on the watch. the effort didn't start feeling hard until around two miles to go, when i dropped down to sub-4:00 pace and then sub-3:40 for the final kick.

feeling very good. training: it works!

ETA: fueling was also on point. i forgot to bring coffee with me but i bought a caffeinated gu gel at the little mini-expo they had set up and took it a half hour before the start, along with a fig bar. SiS beta 40g gels at 5k, 10k, and 15k, and water only from the four aid stations. helped that it was cold, just above freezing at the start and probably low-40s/6-7 degrees at the end. so not much sweat.

had fun at the scrabble tournament yesterday, as well. went 4-4, with four close wins, one close loss, and three ass-whippings, so despite going .500 my cumulative spread was a hilarious -649. i really do like playing scrabble, i should play more and study at least a little. i am, as they say, a good living room player, but it'd be fun to level up at least a bit.

yesterday

- run 1:15:18, 13.60 km
nice, warm but took it easy and didn't feel as hard as the other day.

today

- run 41:06, 7.83 km w/ 4 x 20s strides in the middle
temps headed down again and it was drizzling. felt pretty good.

no run tomorrow, as i'm playing in an all-day scrabble tournament that starts in the morning. hopefully will wake up sunday feeling ready to run fast!

- supportive speed
-- warm up
-- 16 x [500m @ 110-112% MP w/ 30s walking recovery]
-- cool down
more like 111-113%, close enough. RPE 6.5-7, short reps just don't feel that hard.

- run 44:33, 7.83 km
slow and very easy, legs felt tired and probably more tired than they feel. very annoyingly, this got me to a training load of 597 for the week, per intervals.icu. did put me over 90 km, at least.

half marathon race next sunday. john davis suggests going all-out in races so that's the plan. i've got one other workout this week (16x500m @ 108-112% MP, on wednesday) and otherwise will probably dial back mileage a little so that i'm at least a bit fresh for the race. bit nervous about it tbh, i want to be faster but i don't really feel faster yet.

slept for >10 hours last night, cannot remember the last time i slept that long or woke up that late (9:30). kind of messes up my plans for the day as i'll have to do my workout in the afternoon, when it'll be pretty warm, but guess my body needed it. logging because of how unusual it is.

- MP run
-- warm up
-- 6 x [3 km @ MP, 1 km @ 85% MP]
-- cool down
RPE 8, could have done another set but glad i was done. one downside of doing workouts on that route is that the first "cool down" km is a very steep uphill. sucked today. warm today (73F/23C) but not humid and most of the route is shady. work sets were 4:24-28, and on balance were more uphill than downhill, since i did them on a 2k out-and-back. recovery intervals were 5:02-09 and mostly downhill.