Catching Up

It has been an interesting year since the marathon, but it feels like my training is finally back on track. One week after running Napa, I had minor surgery for a hernia repair. That was 30 days with no running. And a relatively slow come back when I did start back. It was probably good to give my body a break anyway after the marathon training, but I felt like I lost a lot. It really wasn't until June when I began to feel like I had fully recovered. Then I had another 7 day break in early July for another unrelated medical issue. But since mid-July I have been consistently over 30 miles a week, including a long run of either 13 or 15 miles.

So what's next? I have been saying since last December that if I qualified for Napa in March that I would want to go back and run the Denver Half Marathon this year. So right now, that's what I'd like to do. A small matter of finances may get in the way, but we will see. I put together a training program based on Healthy Intelligent Training (see side bar) with 16 weeks of base training, 4 weeks of hill training, 4 weeks of speed work, 2 weeks of taper, then Denver.

My resting heart rate is nice and low - about 4% lower than when training for Napa. My legs feel good - although I still have achilles tendon soreness pretty much all the time. And as I'm getting in to my hill training, I'm seeing my pace pick up on regular runs, with no increase in heart rate.

All in all, it's been a pretty good year running. Now if I could only get my allergies to taper off...