Training log - Week ending 9/13/2026

This week was 51 miles of running, 18 "miles" of pool-running, and 1000 yards of swimming.

I kicked off the week by getting my Covid shot on Monday.  My original plan had been to get both the Covid and flu shots the week after Chicago - I always try to schedule vaccinations for before or after marathon training cycles so that my training isn't disrupted. 

However, at least 5 of my friends have had Covid in the past month, so it's definitely around now.  If I were to get Covid in the next few weeks, it would force me to skip Chicago, so I decided to get the Covid shot now. (Flu can wait until mid-October).

Unsurprisingly, I felt crappy and needed extra sleep for the next few days.  By Friday, I was feeling close to normal, so I showed up at the track for the team tempo workout.  

I had been hoping for a decent weather day (finally) so that I could get a sense of my fitness, but no such luck on Friday.  Instead, I got steady rain, poor visibility, and standing water on the track. 

The poor visibility was an opportunity to see if my running has improved at all in low visibility conditions (neuro issues mean that I don't have a good sense of where the ground is, so I depend on my vision a lot).  The answer was yes, my running in poor visibility has improved.  But it's still not great.  I was stuck at marathon effort until the sun rose a bit more, and then I was able to shift into tempo effort.  I decided on the fly that the first mile of the tempo didn't really count and stretched my planned 4 miles to 5.  The end result was an 8K tempo that was essentially 2K at marathon effort and 6K at tempo effort.

I finished up the week with a shorter long run on Saturday - mostly easy (around 10:00 pace) but with ten 60 second strides in the second hour, each with 8 minutes of jogging recovery.  I've done the tempo-day one/long run with strides day two a few times before and gotten a good response from it.  Structuring my week this way also meant that I could have two easy days before doing some 800s on Tuesday in prep for the DC half marathon next weekend.

Speaking of the DC half - unfortunately it's looking like we aren't going to get a break in the weather for that one.  But seven days is still far enough that things can change.  At least I'm heat/humidity acclimated at this point.

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Monday: 8 "miles" pool-running and PT exercises in the morning.  Covid shot and foam rolling in evening.

Tuesday: 7.5 miles, mostly very easy (9:37), but with drills, PT exercises, and 12x100m strides (27 down to 24) in the morning. Foam rolling at night.

Wednesday: 9.5 miles very easy (9:53) and 300 yards swimming. Sports massage at night.

Thursday: 5 miles very easy (12:40) and then another 1.5 miles (10:16) with 2 strides (testing a new pair of shoes), Followed with upperbody weights/core and PT exercises. Foam rolling at night.

Friday: 11.5 miles, including an 8K tempo in 38:29 (7:57/7:50/7:40/7:35/7:26), followed by six 30 second hill repeats (cycling twice through easy, moderate, and hard efforts). Foam rolling at night.

Saturday:16 miles, mostly easy but with 10x1:00 on/8:00 jog starting in second hour.  Followed with 4 "miles" pool-running. Foam rolling at night.

Sunday: 6 "miles" pool-running, 700 yards swimming, and core+PT exercises. Foam rolling at night