Reply to a comment + Long run- 22 miles.

am) Long run- 22 miles in 2:27. Just below 6:45 pace on a fairly accurate course. My hydration and nutrition protocol was excellent so I saw little elevation in HR towards the end. The first 10 miles were in 1:10 (7:00 pace) so I was able to negative split comfortably. The effort and fatigue for this run was hardly noticeable. HR averaged 151 with a max of 164 at the very end with a slight push. Minimum HR after mile 1 was 143. This run is what will allow me to reach my goals.

Brfoot posted a comment on yesterday's post with a few good questions in regards to my last 10 weeks of training. I appreciate it a lot when you lurkers ask questions! It gives me a chance to show you my thought processes and approach to my training ideas. Plus we can hopefully open up lines of discussion and learn a bit from each other. I encourage and ask you all to ask more questions and post comments. I have lot's to learn too.

Brfoot writes: So do you have any rest days....real rest days....on your butt watching tv, playing with your son?? Getting 2 full nights of sleep between runs.What kind of taper will you do, if any.

My response: Good questions. As for rest days, I will take a day off if I feel that a run will only make me feel worse. Generally though, a full day of rest makes me feel worse than had I gone for a jog. I have considered throwing in recovery workouts on my mountain bike (or God help me- in the pool) but right now I need to build my running volume consistently over the next 2 years. I consider this year and next as preparation for the real training to come.
Remember that I am a stay at home father.. so I play with my son from about 8am until about 6pm every day! I do place playing with my son above my training though. I also plan my weeks around my wife's work schedule so that I do have time to fit my mileage in. I quit triathlon because the training was so time consuming, now a 100 mile week for me is about 11 hours of work... that really isn't much! I am usually done with my morning run before my wife and son get out of bed. I also use the baby jogger more than I write about and have done tempo runs with it.
Getting 2 full nights of sleep between runs. Before Ben was born I went about 2 years of sleeping 4-5 hours a night. Right now I feel phenomenal off of 6-7 hours.
My taper will be following the ideas proposed by McMillan and will not have a sharp reduction in volume. Part of the idea behind this last 10 week's schedule is that I won't be running my body in to the ground as much by trying to hold 100+ miles per week. I hope to go in to my last 2 weeks feeling somewhat rested. My last 4 weeks before Austin should have a mileage taper roughly like ~90/ 80/ 70/ 70. The week of the race is 70 but that includes the race. In the past I feel that I always went from (for Ironman) high volume of 30+ hours a week and dropped my volume too sharply. A severe drop in volume is a shock to your body and can make you feel like crap. When I plan an athletes schedule their "rest weeks" are only 4-5 days and there is only one complete day off, this is to limit the shut down of their metabolism and the loss of blood volume, both contributors to the feeling of lethargy. A body in motion stays in motion could be used here. The lethargic, shut down feeling is something I always thought was normal for a taper but is doesn't need to be. You do need to be fearless in trying to hold a higher volume/ frequency of training than a typical taper though.