November 21, 2004 Journal Entry

Posted Tuesday, November 23, 2004

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Mileage has gone well, but I'm coming out of a bad stretch of training and I seem to be very slow heading into this week's race. Since the Altitude Project camp in August (www.AltitudeProject.com), my mileage has been very good for me. My last 5 weeks in a row have topped 90 miles. I have felt good throughout the high mileage training, but as I reached the point where I really should have adapted and felt great, instead I felt flat. For a week and a half my legs have felt achy, and attempts at speed work have failed miserably.

I'm racing this Thursday in a pretty big road 5K. There will be about 750 entries, and it always has a nice pack up front. I was targeting about 15:40, which was both what I thought I was capable of and what it would take to be in the hunt to win. When I tried short stuff in training to get ready for race pace, I found that even 400m at 5:00 pace was extremely tough. I just can't get my legs moving. Unfortunately when I slowed down to more typical training paces, I found I couldn't sustain those either. I've gone pretty easy the last week, so I'm hoping things come around by Thursday for the race.

I'm really not sure what the problem has been. I had a mild cold, but a trained well during that, and only struggled after it was over. Perhaps I ran myself down a bit. Maybe it just took some time for the mileage to start wearing me down. I've had 8 weeks since my last easy week, so maybe it was just too much. I was starting to feel a little psychologically flat from training twice a day. I was really having to work to get in both runs.

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