Training Perspective - Some Confidence

One of the things I learned during the soul buster (Sat before last) was to focus on my own pace and effort despite what my teammates were doing. I've taken that same reflection towards my overall mileage and am feeling very confident in where I am at this point in the season.

Some background: I joined Team Rogue specifically for the 'high mileage' program. I know my body can handle a large load of mileage, without significant quality workouts. This summer my goal has been to ignore what other people post for their own weekly totals and just focus on my own body and my own performance.

Since joining the team in December of last year, I've had a hard time figuring out where my sweet spot is in terms of overall effort. I have run a 90 mile week, several 80+ mile weeks, and lots of 60-75 mile weeks. I have felt some burnout, some injury, definitely a lot of fatigue, but this season I think I have gotten it right.

In May and June of this year, I built up to 70-75 miles per week as my big base. I over-exerted in early July, sufferering a slight hamstring strain that took a little while to come back completely from. My overall mileage stayed pretty consistently high the whole summer, even running with bad hamstrings. The result of focusing on listening to my body and not feeling pressure to run the 80-90+ mile weeks is that I'm feeling great now 3-4 weeks out from Portland. Since mid-July I have been running 55-65 mile weeks, 1-2 quality workouts per week, and about 45 miles for our recovery weeks. My legs (even despite a twinge last week in my left hamstring) have been feeling really strong, and this morning I feel on top of the world after only a four-miler.

Some perspective from years past -

2006 - highest monthly mileage - March (234 miles), followed by my PR at Boston 3:37:23

2007 - highest monthly mileage - June (181 miles), too much quality that summer - SI joint injury took me out 6-8 weeks

2008 - highest monthly mileage - August (202 miles), last 22-24 miler strained calf muscles going up Enfield - hurt for marathon, but still ran.

2009 - I have run 5 months this year with monthly totals above my highest pre-Boston 2006 PR total.

• Jan 2009 - 300 miles
• Feb 2009 - 250 miles - plus requalified for Boston at Austin Marathon running a 'workout'
• March 2009 - 287 miles - started to feel injured - in April, Nashville was hot - no PR
• Jun 2009 - 273 miles - feeling good
• August 2009 - 247 miles - strong mileage despite hamstring problem in July.
• September 2009 - still have 200 miles planned on schedule, including 'peak weeks' with reduced mileage.

The confidence is starting to come out. Looking back at the past three years, the analytical part of my brain knows I have put in all of the work in 2009. I have run so many miles. I have run the right paces. I need to take the confidence in the numbers and focus on running the best race I can in Portland.