Sunday

am) 5 miles jogging super easy.
I've been anxiously waiting for the 8 week mark in my schedule. I can stop feeling the need to run hard on the track and can focus on what I love to do more than anything- which is run long. I didn't run long today because I'm done fighting through my 2 day fatigue lag which is compounded significantly living at high altitude- recovery is the most affected. I ran solid on Friday and feel the brunt of the effort today, I expected it and didn't try to push through it. The days of the week for the next 8 weeks in my training log are planned as:
Long/ hard
Easy
Easy
Long/ hard
Easy
Easy
Long/ hard
And so on.
Hard will be defined as 95%- 105% of goal pace. Long will be defined as a lot of miles. Each of the key days will either be combined or one or the other.
Part of why I'm looking forward to this is that I don't really enjoy short, hard efforts. Although my most impressive PR's are at races 5000 and shorter... that's not what I enjoy. I only raced well at Ironman because I loved 6-7 hour hard training days, but when forced to, I did go under 2:00 in nearly ever Olympic distance race I did. The point of this is that I can run fast when I have to, I just don't want to. And this thought is evolving still, the more miles I run on quiet roads up in the mountains the less I want to structure my training around traditional marathon ideas. Tuesday's run of this past week was possibly the most enjoyable run I've ever done. To simply let my brain shut off and to push myself on a course that was undefined was great. Can I reach my marathon goal with this attitude and strategy? I don't know. I do know that I have fallen short of my potential in all 5 of my marathons by doing what has traditionally been accepted as "the way to train". Part of why I love Renato Canova's philosophy is that it is based on the hard long run and not high intensity.