9/15 to 9/21

First of all, my knee-jerk reaction to the bail-out was, well, knee jerk. I still think this country has a lot to address. I know, pretty vague. I guess I'm pretty sold on my superficial understanding of the parallel people have made between the fall of Rome and the troubles facing America: Our greatest threat comes from within, not from some kind of external enemy that's going to win some military engagement. Of course, I suppose a "take-over" could occur economically from some foreign threat. That would be ironic. I just think the general excess we've come to associate with America is very very troubling. The bail-out is probably much needed on some level, but the damage has been done. The government, now, is, literally, a giant hedge fund.

As for training, a great week! I have adopted some high intensity work. Trevor Glavin is the source of this approach. I am so grateful for this guy's generosity and knowledge. I have felt the same about Lucho and JW and GZ and anyone else I've "talked to" in this sick endurance blog community. As long as everything goes according to plan, I will be racing Trevor in Hawaii this December as part of my first big family vacation. Once I book the tickets, etc., I'll post that excitement/plan.

As for the training, Trevor was nice enough to give me some ideas on how he would be approaching this little 12 week build-up. My initial response was along the lines of is that enough hill work, so you're looking at about this much weekly mileage, etc. He was quick to say because of the quality of these work-outs, mileage is not a problem. I guess becaue I've been doing a "just run" approach for months now, I was a little skeptical/unfamiliar. Tempo has been my speed work. A lot of hills, just going up and up, putt putt, strong, but not blistering.

I'm calling this an "introductory week." Last week's training culminated with a 20 miler in the Mt. Laguna area. An outstanding run with outstanding people. I hit, I think, around 50 miles, my usual. But now, I'm going to get specific. This new approach is really specific. I suppose because of the big decrease in mileage I'm thinking of this as introductory. Also, I didn't hit each and every work-out like I was supposed to. Besides that, in terms of energy level, this turned-out to be a recovery week. Which gave me all the more time to discover how stoked I am about this plan. Geez, when I look back over 2008 I'll have a lot of cool training experiences to draw from. All I need now are a couple of nice results from my last two races of the season.

The plan in a nutshell: basically, Monday is recovery run, Tuesday is hills (hard/fast), Wed. recovery, Thursday hills(h/f), Friday off, Saturday tempo, and Sunday long run.

My week shaped-up with Monday off, Tuesday 6 miles of the hill w/o done INDOORS? Felt great, but INDOORS?. . . . Wednesday 4 miles recovery in some new shoes!! Thursday another hill work-out though I still didn't nail it - 8 miles - then lifted a lot of weight for me!! My arse still hurts from the lunges!!! Friday off. Saturday I did a killer tempo/hill work-out, about 8 miles in an hour and the little 2x2min hills followed by 5 minute LT (which is more or less the hills but these build week by week) kicked my arse! And today I . . . . .took a 3 hour nap!!!!!!!!!!

I think the intensity is great. I have some work to do this next week that simply consists of nailing my work-outs! Thanks again, Coach!