Week 2: Review

The schedule this week was a little more complicated than expected, which caused me to miss a few of my planned sessions. Naturally, I still managed to perform all of the planned running sessions but my cycling and walking mileage is way down from what was intended. I'll have to focus on getting back into that routine this week, as hopefully things will begin to wind down again soon.

This week also marks the official start to my training for the Mississauga Marathon, using the Pfitzinger-Douglas 18 week/55 mile program. The mileage for the first couple of weeks is a bit lower than I've been doing over the last month or so, meaning that this week was a bit of a step back. With that said, that mileage is spread over fewer runs so most of my individual sessions were longer than I'm used to. Fortunately, everything worked out well this time around so it's just a matter of getting used to the new schedule.

Weather wise, a couple of storms rolled through this week which did make the pathways a bit icy and slowed down some of my runs. Fortunately, I got the speed session in on Tuesday when it wasn't too bad, and the moderation of my pace was likely a good thing as I do have a tendency to do slower sessions a bit faster than I should.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 51.5km (32mi)
Walking: 24km (15mi)
Cycling: 50km (31mi)
Total: 125.5km (78mi)

The weather for the upcoming week looks like it's going to be on the chilly side, but fortunately it doesn't look like there will be too much snow or wind so aside from having to bundle up a little better than usual it shouldn't be too bad. The Pfitzinger schedule calls for about 36 mi this week, although I might throw in an extra recovery session on Wednesday as it's been a while since I've run with the group. As noted above, I'm also going to focus on trying to make sure that I get all of my cycling and walking mileage in this week as I've been slacking off a bit on that lately ;)

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 8mi (12.9K) w/10x100m
Wed 30K Cycle (4mi Recovery?)
Thurs 10mi (16.1K) Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 5mi (8K) Recovery
Sun 13mi (20.9K) LSD

Looking ahead, I'm going to have to make a few modifications to the schedule to properly prepare for the Around the Bay race. Primarily, the Pfitzinger program doesn't have any explicit hill repeats, so I'm going to have to work something in to prepare for the hills near the end of this race. I've been working hills into my long runs for a while now, but I'll have to play around with some variations to see what works best on this front. Secondly, I'll likely want to do some tapering prior to the ATB, which may require some small adjustments to the schedule.