Mid week:

I ran a tough hill workout on Tuesday, then yesterday a tougher than expected 1 hour run due to not having my training philosophy squared away. I read on the blogosphere some more and after reading on the McMillan running site, and the irunfar site (one of the authors of which contributes to the latter for ultra training info and is a good ultra runner) I've decided I will be doing a modified pace based system, including key workouts such as speed (though this will likely be the first to go), stamina, and long runs. In light of my ultra goals, I will most likely do hills as speed work and tempo runs for the stamina while focusing on volume and long runs as much as possible, both of which will be run at slower paces, though not the low hr's (I don't think; still ambiguity there in my thinking) that accompany Mitteman and Maffetone. I say ambiguity above because the hr's associated with the paces prescribed in the system adhere to the same parameters of Van Aaken/Maff/Mittleman for recovery runs. Fitzgerald provides the structure for my schedule and I will use that as a foundation and compare his system with McMillans. I like McMillans because it's loose. He has some great articles on his site on how to construct a training regime, assessing your strengths, weaknesses, and goals as well as target race and structuring your training accordingly. I do this informally, but it's nice to see it in print and have a system for doing it. I will be outlining my goals and schedule out my training in another post soon. Loosely, I want to run a hundred next summer and fall, or next summer OR fall. That means some interim 50K's and 50 milers. I'll update soon. I'm also going to try and post some picture from my local locales as soon as I take the time to download them out of my phone. See ya.