This week was 60 miles of running, 30 "miles" of pool-running and 1000 yards of swimming -- training log is here.
This was my peak volume week, though a lot of it was in the pool. I don't really get too focused on the actual numbers I hit; rather I like to focus on general themes of increasing volume while balancing stress and recovery. Here, hitting that proper balance meant that I spent three days in the pool, rather than my normal two, thus my pool-running was a third of my total volume.
I went with two big workouts this week - the tempo on Wednesday as part of a 14 mile day, and the Saturday 21 miler.
I've found that I really can't handle three hard days a week anymore. When I'm not marathon training, my long runs aren't very long or hard, so the two track workouts on Tuesday and Friday become my hard days, with two and three days of recovery between them. But now that my long run has become my biggest run of the week, I need to really pull back on the work I do during the rest of the week to balance stuff out.
And yes, I know this is where the pros shift to a 10 day training cycle. But....that's surprisingly hard to coordinate with a non-running white collar job based on a 7 day calendar. So two hard workouts in 7 days is a good compromise, I think.
Monday: Upper body weights/core, and 12 "miles" pool-running.
Tuesday: 7.5 miles (8:58), yoga, and then 5 miles (8:41),plus drills and 2 uphill strides. Foam rolling at night.
Wednesday: 14 miles, including an 8K tempo on the track in 32:02 (6:28/6:24/6:29/6:25/6:16) Followed with injury prevention work and 500 yards recovery swimming. Sports massage in afternoon
Thursday: Upperbody weights, core, and 12 "miles" pool-running in the morning. Foam rolling at night.
Friday: 8 miles (9:01), yoga, and then 4.5 miles (8:26),plus drills and 2 uphill strides. Foam rolling at night.
Saturday: 21 miles progressive, split as the first 7 averaging 8:44; the next 7 averaging 7:36, and the last 7 averaging 6:51. Followed with injury prevention work and 500 yards recovery swimming. Foam rolling at night.
Sunday: yoga and 1 hour of pool-running. Foam rolling at night.
Definitely understand the switch to two hard days. I tried a ten-day cycle once, and it was mayhem! I ended up switching so many workouts around that I had the same number of hard days within a 7-day period anyway, so I went back to weekly schedules. During a marathon buildup we usually end up with a long run that is a combination of conversational pace + some faster miles, a tempo run, and a track day - but the track day is generally more mild as far as pace goes. In fact it's often something akin to a tempo, like aerobic pace up and down bridges. If we aren't doing a marathon, track is actually on the track, haha, and is faster and harder - but our long runs don't have a workout.
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