How's the legs feeling today? Oh and if your weather is anything like mine today, did you actually think it could get any cooler? I checked the forecast and tomorrow's high here is supposed to be 65 Hope your having a great day Bob!!

Hi Pam! The legs were feeling it this AM. A little sore, a little tired. I worked them over pretty good last night with the foam roller, I think that contributed to the soreness. And yes, it is gloriously cool here! Love it! Signs of things to come! Enjoy your day too Pam!

Sounds like your day started off great despite not sleeping in! A little sore, little tired to be expected! I've never used the foam roller, but I have to admit I've had the stick for almost a year and JUST started using it (after ankle injury). So glad I have it.

Great week!!! Enjoy your "step back"!! Nice to know your legs are feeling great despite the milage!! Hope your better at stepping back then I am!

Hope you had a GREAT day off!!

Smile at the rain.... .... what else can you do, right? It sure beats the heat and humidity. So yes, this morning I awoke to the sound of rain on the skylights. It was a cool 60* as well. Before I went to bed, I looked at the forecast and it was calling for heavy rain in the AM, so I was mentally prepared to run in that. Instead, it turned out to be a nice light rain, enough to cool you off, but not enough to totally soak you. Good stuff. Stepped out into the darkness at 5:30am. A wave of goosebumps went through me as the cool air and rain hit me. The sky was black, except for the eastern horizon where there were some breaks in the clouds, and the still hidden sun was illuminating the bottoms of the clouds a bright, firey red. That huge red glow lit up all the trees and houses and other surroundings. What a neat contrast it was to see everything glowing red against a very dark, black background. The schedule called for 10 miles, with 3x2 miles at marathon pace with a 1/2 mile recovery inbetween. Started off feeling pretty sluggish with the warmup. It wasn't before long that my quads started feeling sore. I guess that 18 miler over the weekend took more out of me than I thought. In retrospect, I probably should've made today another recovery run and run this workout tomorrow instead, but the brain hadn't woken up to be able to think yet. All it knew was what the schedule said to do. Yesterday I pulled out the article that gave the guidelines for the training program that I am using. I wanted to refresh my memory on it's concepts, just to make sure I was doing things properly. I got to the section on these intervals, and found that I'd been running the 1/2 mile recovery portion of them too slowly. It said that the marathon paced portion should not be so difficult that you need much recovery between them. Therefore, it's important to keep the pace of the recovery fairly brisk. In the past, I'd been slowing down about 40 seconds/mile on the recovery. So today, I was gonna try slowing it down to 25-30 slower instead. In the future, I'll probably slow it down even less, but for now I thought this would do. As I'm running the first interval, I'm thinking "This is gonna be tough! I'll have less of a recovery both timewise and physically, since I'll be keeping the pace higher inbetween intervals." But actually the opposite turned out to be true. In the past, when I would slow it down those 40 seconds/mile for the recovery, that was a big drop in pace. It would then feel like I had to speed up a lot when starting the next interval. But now, by only slowing down a little bit on the rest portion, it was still slow enough to allow me to rest, yet when it came time to pick up the pace again, all I had to do was increase my speed just a little, which didn't seem that difficult. So on my 2nd and 3rd intervals, I found myself having to hold back to keep the pace. Not sure if I explained myself very clearly there, but in a nutshell, it worked. I guess there is a method to the madness. Grabbed the dog to walk a couple of miles afterwards, by that point the rain was coming down pretty good, then it was a muchly needed HOT shower. I was freezing! So despite sore quads, it was a good run..... rain, goosebumps and all.

Great run in the run, Bob! Interesting what you wrote about speeding up the recoveries. I will have to look back at my recovery paces and think about that concept for my future interval runs. The few I've done definitely have that feeling of having to speed up a lot for the next interval.

Thanks Mike! As far as the recovery goes, it depends on the type of intervals you are doing. Mine were marathon paced intervals, and the effort for those shouldn't feel that hard, therefore you can get by with a "harder" recovery period. If the intervals were done at tempo pace or faster, your recovery should be easier, otherwise chances are you will fade too much during the workout. I don't want you to automatically assume that your recovery periods are too easy. It depends on your workout.

WOW!! Nice when you try something and it just seems to fit! I totally get what you we're saying and glad to hear that despite sore quads you had a great run! BTW what kind of dog do you have?

BTW what kind of dog do you have?

Meet Jake (a.k.a. "Mooch"). He's a yellow lab.