Hump Day

This morning's route. In 47:30. I'll post more later.

Nothing but your basic 5 miler this morning. Pace ended up being around 9'27". That is a little better than my 6 miler from last week. I have some pace work to do though. I'll be thinking about that in a bit.

In my training log for this MWTC 10K, I've planned to try to increase my mileage by about 10% every week. This week I should be running about 4.4 miles each time out. Obviously, I have had a mixed result with my recent runs. Monday, I couldn't make that distance, but today, I think I could have gone another couple of miles easy. I guess my runs later this week will be the better indicator. I think I am going to run tomorrow and then rest Friday (we'll be driving to Nashville late in the afternoon and I don't want to be tired). That way I can get a distance run in up in Nashville on Saturday. It will probably be a treadmiller, but we'll see.

As far as pace goes, I know that is something I would like to improve. My goal come race time is to be able to finish a true 10K in somewhere around 50 minutes. That puts me right at an 8' mile pace. Since I haven't really come close to that over any distance, I have got my work cut out for me. I believe that I will begin trying to get some pace work in during my runs in the coming weeks. I want to build a solid distance base (above 5 miles) before I start pushing it too much. I am worried lately with my calf being sore about an injury totally knocking me off schedule. I'm not positive that I can afford to take another couple of weeks off.

As for my calf, I have started stretching pretty good after my run and it seems to help the soreness subside. I read an interesting article on RunnersWorld.com about stretching and running that surprised me a bit. It turns out that stretching does not really cut down on injuries for runners. I know that this is something that goes completely against our traditional thinking, but read the article and see for yourself. I am not currently stretching with purpose before a run, but I do notice that when I get started at 5 in the morning, that first mile is sometimes one of my slowest. It takes me a while to get my legs warmed up. I almost feel like the tinman who needs a few drops of oil at all the joints to get limbered up. I think I will put in some pre-run stretching over the next couple of weeks to see how I feel and if I can get rolling a little quicker.