So what's been going on . . .

Well, I've been working on running slower as weird as that may sound but I'm working on running easier on my easy days so I can run harder on my hard days. I've discovered that I've pretty much been running in a pre-fatigued state for years and never really ran easy, even on easy days where I was still running a sub 8:00 pace. This is likely why I've been fatigued for my hard workouts.

I'm feeling great after a week or so of testing this out. I rarely run sub 9:00 on easy days and I just float along and often feel like I didn't even get a workout even after a 7-8 mile easy run. The great part is I feel really strong when I push into hard workouts. On this front, I've reduced the number of hard workouts on a monthly basis. I run by feel so I looked at my log to try to find trends and I think I may have discovered a framework for me which is based on a 10 day running cycle with 2x mini 5 day sections. Basically, over 10 days, I will run 8 and rest 2 and within that it's basically a 4:1 ratio of run days to rest days every 5 days and during each 5 day cycle I will do 3 easy runs, 1 rest day, and either a long run or speed/interval work. That means, over a 10 day cycle I will do 1 hard speed session, 1 long run, 2 rest days and 6 easy days.

So far my body is loving it. We'll see how it goes.

Harry