2/15-2/21: 70MPW and 2 Solid Workouts

This week was pretty hard. My legs are worked. I did 2 solid workouts of pretty decent distances. Both of them were done on as the red fox would say, the dreadmill. Tuesday was the first, where I ran 16 miles @ 5:53 average per mile, 17.5miles total. And today, Sunday was the second, I ran 17.5 miles @ 5:52 average per mile, and 19 miles total. These treadmill workouts are tough mentally, and it is good to practice that. I also ran the second workout in my lightweight trainers, which is good since I will be running in those in the marathon. Obviously I would've liked to do these workouts on the canal, but the treadmill is a decent surface that can mimic the flat shamrock course. On Saturday I DID run at the canal. I couldn't stand the roads any longer, and I was sick of cars and no areas of seclusion. I drove to Old Angler's and put on my yaktrax and trudged into the snow. The footing is pretty bad(wouldn't recommend running there yet), even though the yaktrax work well on packed snow. I couldn't go very fast and after 25 minutes of that crap I looped back onto the parallel dirt road that was basically free of snow. The one area where I actually ran on the towpath itself was near Great Falls. Boy was that worse than I thought it would be. Mud and more mud. Deep mud. It's a mess. I saw some fallen trees over the canal as well which I had to stop and duck under. This snow storm really did some damage. I got in about 9.5m that day. Overall I am feeling pretty good and very fit. My total mileage this week was 70, same as last week. Here is my mileage for the 2010 year so far:

Week 1: 63
Week 2: 80
Week 3: 83
Week 4: 62
Week 5: 83
Week 6: 65
Week 7: 70
Week 8: 70

The Colonial Half is next weekend. I look foward to it and will probably keep the mileage in the 60's next week.

My goal for this 13.1 is to run right around 1:11:00. I know I am ready to run that time. As for the Marathon, my training continues to tell me what I am capable of this time around. With a few more workouts I should be good to go in 4 weeks.