Dave's Spring MIT 2016 - Week 6

Another week of increased mileage has come and gone. Rather than recap each day's workout, I'll go with the highlights:

Track Tuesday kinda sorta didn't happen. There was a miscommunication between BGSU (where we run track nights) and our MIT leadership. In lieu, some people ran the workout outside at Fallen Timbers.

For Tempo Thursday, we had a strong and mighty turnout with A Flock of Runners. Afterwards, we had beer and food at Beer Barrel. I finally ate the meatball salad. It was sloppy and delicious.

The Saturday long run was great. Fourteen miles nice and easy. Some in The Flock like to run ahead of us coaches. And then they have to wait for us and they get antsy about stiffening up. Stay behind the coaches, Flock. Take it easy.

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And now it's Thursday of the following week. It's like, 50 degrees outside. That means that I get to wear shorts to run outside! Yass. Yass yass yass.

I'm on the mend from a cold that bitch-slapped me on Sunday evening. I attribute my body's ability to quickly evict said cold to a diet rich in minerals and nutrients and devoid of gluten and dairy. And lots of water. One day I had no coffee. That was sad.

Dave's Spring MIT 2018 - Week Five

Another week of training is done. Way to go, guys! Here's what we did:

M: 6 miles (easy)
T: 5x1000 (threshold)
W: 5 miles (easy)
Th: 7 miles (2-6 at race pace)
F: Rest
Sa: 12 (easy)
Su: Rest

The long run was fun. And exceptionally paced by Joe. We committed to The Flock that long runs will be at a 9:30 pace and Joe's Garmin data shows an average of 9:28 for the 12 miles.

Why so slow, you may ask? Because that's the plan. I like rules and I'm a team-player, and so if the training philosophy is to run this particular volume of weekly miles including the long run at an easy pace of 30 to 60 seconds slower than race pace, then by golly, sign me up.

I didn't always feel this way, though. Truth be told, it still isn't my preferred style of training. BUT I get it. The first time I coached MIT, back in 2016, I begrudgingly ran 16 weeks of long runs at a 9:30 pace at our absolute fastest. For four months, I pretended that I believed in the plan as to not undermine our leadership at Dave's. And then on race day, it somehow all worked out. Heck, I even ran a PR. And then another PR a month later. So like, it works.

Trust the training!