Just out of curiosity, what kind of paces are you doing your easy runs at now?

Week 6 Goals: This week will be similar to last week, except that I'll probably run every day with no days off and I'll likely split Wednesday's mileage up between multiple runs rather than running home from work. If I can get 10 miles in during the morning, then I'll run at lunch time, otherwise I'll get my remaining mileage in when I get home from work. I'm going to plan on back to back long runs on trails next weekend again, although I should have company on Sunday so that should make it easier to keep focused and not have as many distractions as I did today (started late and stopped in the middle to chat with someone and ran really slow with some friends I found on the trail for the last 6 or 7 miles.) Hopefully that'll lead to 40 miles over the weekend. The goal will be 5-6 hours, whatever that distance winds up being. This week should be interesting. I think I'm going to make my mileage no problem, but it won't be exactly as I'd planned. No lunch run yesterday, but today I did a triple for 21+ miles and I'm going to be running home from work on Friday since Saturday a friend is putting on a fat ass style race and I'll likely be helping out with that. That could involve anywhere from 10k to 15 miles when all is said and done, so I should end up running 80-95 miles, I think, but no idea where in that range it will be. Oh well, I'll play it by ear and probably take it easy near the beginning of next week (kind of like I did this week.)

Week 6: Pretty much as I'd figured it would be. I got the long run in mid-week, but did not run home from work on Friday. I stayed home from work on Thursday to work on a new product I have coming out tomorrow morning (Tuesday) and then went in early to coach so that I could get 4 miles or so in ahead of time. Saturday's long run was interesting, given that I got a migraine within the first 10 minutes. I went and laid down in my car for 15-20 minutes and then got a few more miles in before my friend showed up at 8:00 to run for a couple of hours with me. I got another 30 minutes in after he took off to make sure I got in my 3 hours and 20+ miles. Sunday was a lot of fun, but didn't involve as many miles as I would have liked. I got side tracked by helping to set up the trail race, and then once I was out there it was more like a fartlek / interval session than a long run. I brought my video camera and was running along the course recording folks as they scrambled up rock faces and ran through puddles and such. Lots of fun. I got my 7 day rolling average into the 80s on Saturday, and ended the week at ~79 miles. Week 7 Goals: This week I want to ramp up the mileage into the 90s before cutting back the week of Thanksgiving. I started by doing 13+ today (would have been more but I really needed to use the bathroom, and needed to rake leaves afterwards so I didn't go out to run more.) Tomorrow, I'll try to get in at least 10 miles, although depending upon weather and whether I go to work or not I might do 10-15 miles mid-day and then go do my 5+ on the trails tomorrow night with my buddies. If I get that all in, then I'll probably only run 5 miles on Wednesday and try to get a few runs in on Thursday before loading up again on Friday. This weekend I'll be aiming once again for the 6+ hours of running on the trails.

Side note: I wasn't looking for it, but my rolling 7 day average has topped 100 miles for the first time since I was in college today. Last Saturday to this Friday: 100.7 miles in 13:27:20.

Wow! Nice work. I am looking forward to hearing your experience of actually running the 50 miles.

Also, let me ask, is there some easy automated way to calculate the 7-day running average using running ahead? or are you manually adding the total? I think this would be a useful thing to have in RA.

There isn't a way to do it automatically right now, but that feature is going to be in the next version of the log.

Week 7 Goals: This week I want to ramp up the mileage into the 90s before cutting back the week of Thanksgiving. I started by doing 13+ today (would have been more but I really needed to use the bathroom, and needed to rake leaves afterwards so I didn't go out to run more.) Tomorrow, I'll try to get in at least 10 miles, although depending upon weather and whether I go to work or not I might do 10-15 miles mid-day and then go do my 5+ on the trails tomorrow night with my buddies. If I get that all in, then I'll probably only run 5 miles on Wednesday and try to get a few runs in on Thursday before loading up again on Friday. This weekend I'll be aiming once again for the 6+ hours of running on the trails.

Week 7: Well, didn't quite do this week right. Rather than just dipping into the 90s, I spent 3 days with a rolling 7 day average over 100 miles, finishing with 100.6 for the week (max was 102.8). The week started with me taking 2 days off from work to get my new product out the door (competitiveaging.com) so I got a good 13+ miles in on Monday. Tuesday I was a little shy of 10 miles, having went to meet the trail folks a little early. My headlamp was telling me the batteries were about dead while I was running alone ahead of time, but they held out for the entire run, which was nice. The goal on Wednesday was going to be another triple; I got in 7 in the morning to start it off. Unfortunately, I spent over 4 hours on the phone and missed my window of opportunity for running at lunch; actually, I missed out on lunch altogether. I have plenty of snacks at my desk, so I decided not to bother taking lunch at 2:30 and instead left work at 4:00 so I was able to get a longer run in that evening. Managed a bit shy of 19 miles on the day. Thursday I managed a run at lunch time, and then I got a little extra running in while coaching since it was cold so I kept moving between sets while I was timing everybody. Once that was over, I did a lap of the Back Cove with some friends so I got over 14 miles in for the day. Friday, I ran home from work, so that's 12+ miles. I didn't bother adding on anything since I felt that getting over 100 miles for my rolling 7 day average was enough, plus it was cold and I was hungry and had a 20+ miler coming up in the morning. Saturday was great; I did about 10 miles with a pretty large group of trail monsters on some new trails about an hour from my house. Managed to twist my left ankle pretty bad about 8 miles into it, but oh well. Myself and one of the other guys took off for another lap, and added some new trails in while we explored (since we no longer had a guide) but our exploration was a little limited as we wanted to stay in the areas that there was no hunting allowed. All told, I was out there for about 4 hours (although I'd been stopped and waiting for folks to regroup for 15-20 minutes of that) and got about 23 miles in. I twisted my right ankle somewhere around mile 16. Today I took it pretty easy. I ran an easy 4 and a half with my wife; my right ankle was stiff but not painful. I decided to keep going and did another 5 miles at a quicker pace, and that seemed to help in terms of the whole ankle pain bit. It's less painful now than it was this morning, which is good. Week 8 Goals: This is a holiday week, and after my first triple digit week since graduating from college I think I'm ready for a cut back week. I'll plan around getting 20+ miles in on the trails next Sunday, but other than that I'll just take whatever comes my way. I'm not going to worry about getting out for 3 or 4 hour runs when I could be spending time with family, plus I'll have a couple of 2-3 hour drives to mix in there to get visitin' with everyone. I'll probably run 70-80 miles this week, then ramp up the mileage again the week after.

Week 8 Goals: This is a holiday week, and after my first triple digit week since graduating from college I think I'm ready for a cut back week. I'll plan around getting 20+ miles in on the trails next Sunday, but other than that I'll just take whatever comes my way. I'm not going to worry about getting out for 3 or 4 hour runs when I could be spending time with family, plus I'll have a couple of 2-3 hour drives to mix in there to get visitin' with everyone. I'll probably run 70-80 miles this week, then ramp up the mileage again the week after.

Week 8: Yeah, about that... Ran ~21 miles this week. Took a few days completely off. My left calf was bugging me and I felt no need nor desire to stress it, so I went slow, I went short, and I rested it. Hopefully next week it'll feel fine and I can do some high mileage again. Week 9 Goals: I'll be playing this week by ear due to my calf. I'll try running for 60-90 minutes tomorrow, but those miles will all be near my house so I can cut it short if my leg starts to ache. Tuesday will be an easy 5 miles or so on the trails, and then on Wednesday I can hopefully ramp it up to 2+ hours if my leg feels okay. I'll be trying for around 30 miles on the weekend between the two days, for anywhere between 40 and 80 miles next week. Assuming everything goes well, then I'll aim for a high mileage week again the week after. I'm not working on Monday or Wednesday either week.

Week 10 Goals: I've got 4 more weeks until the 50 miler, and training is going great. This will be my last heavy week, which I should be pretty well rested for at this point. The focus of this week is going to be from yesterday through Wednesday, as I intend on running at least 20 miles on Monday and Wednesday to get 3 20+ runs in over a span of 5 days. I have Monday and Wednesday off from work so it shouldn't be too bad. Tuesday & Thursday will be easy runs, Tuesday on trails and Thursday while coaching. I should run a max of 5-6 miles each of those days (less on Thursday). If I feel I need to, then I'll take Friday off again, although Erin will be busy with a take-home essay exam so I'll probably go run for an hour just to keep out of her hair. Saturday I'd like to do 20 miles, but that will be a day of decision for 2 reasons: First, if I'm tired from these 3 20 milers leading up to it, then there's no reason to run that far. I need to start concentrating on recovery more than building strength. Second, and more importantly, if Erin is up into the wee hours of the morning writing her essay exam, then I am going to need to drive her into town to turn the exam in at the law school and that means I'd miss the run with the Trail Monsters. I'll probably take Sunday off or easy depending upon what Saturday brings. Total mileage for the week should be around 80 miles.

Week 10: Monday and Wednesday went exactly as planned, which gave me the following 5 day spread: Saturday: 20.1 miles (trails) Sunday: 6.7 miles Monday: 21.3 miles Tuesday: 5.4 miles (trails) Wednesday: 24.3 miles I was pretty tired after that. Sunday was a slow run w/the group I coach as we battled through the icy streets. We wound up taking 36 minutes to run 3 miles and they didn't bother doing hill repeats. Only one person had screw shoes on and even he had trouble staying upright. We wound up heading back to the store and calling it a night. Friday I didn't run, as Thursday night's storm turned into a full-fledged ice storm over night and brought down the power grid over the southern half of the state. I spent 2.5 hours shoveling the ice in the driveway and spent a lot of time running around like crazy at work (once the power came back on there). Saturday was just an easy run, and then on Sunday I was really busy at work again since I broke our database and had to get that fixed. (Whoops.) 63 miles on the week, now officially tapering. Week 11 Goals: Well, it's Thursday already as I write this, so this week isn't too in question. Monday I ran a tempo run on my lunch loop, the fastest I've run that 5 miles this year. I could feel last week's 3 20+ milers, but held on pretty strong and had a late measured mile into a headwind with a sub-6 time. The funny thing is that I did the same loop on Wednesday and it was one of the slowest times this year I ran on that loop, as it was snowing and even screw shoes didn't give great footing. It took me almost 10 minutes longer to run it. Tuesday was easy miles on the trails, although it was slick and I didn't have screws in my shoes so I cut the run a little shorter than usual. Today I got 6 miles in with the group I coach; I led them on a run down by the water front so we could look at the holiday lights and then came back through town. It was fun. So now I have 2 weeks and 2 days to the race. Tomorrow I have off from work, so I'm going to plan on running somewhere between 10 and 15 miles easy. Saturday I'd like to do a hash run in town, and on Sunday I'd like to get in another 8-10 miles. The next 2 weeks are going to be pretty easy when all is said and done.