Goal: Boston

Wonderful run today.  Got faster as the run progressed with an average of 8:15 pace for the run.  Legs still feel great.

Easy run recovering from the longer run yesterday.  I have been running at least 50% of the runs I have been taking on grass and I am very pleased with my progress so far.  Feeling strong and so far, pain free.  It has been great running without pain as I ran through pain for so long.  Two more weeks of slow addition of speed workouts to my regimen and then I think I am ready to increase the speed focus a bit.

Cool run tonight.  Ran at 8 min/mile pace for the run although finished the last 1/2 mile in a faster clip as it was feeling good to stretch my stride out a little.

Wasn't planning to do this training run today but we are having visitors next week so it will be hard to get a speed workout in next week.  Ran two 1.5 mile repeats at threshold pace (6:50 pace) with a mile in between at 8:50 pace.  Including the warm up and cool down, that brings it to a nice 5.5 mile run to end the week.

Felt strong but I could feel that I was pushing it at the end of the second repeat.  That was pretty humbling because before my injury, I was running my 5.4 mile course in under 7 min/mile.  With that said, I can feel myself getting stronger each week.

We've been having a warm spell here in St. Louis but I didn't run until later in the day so it was nice and cool out there during the run.  Easy 5.4 miles today.

40 min on recumbent bike.

I have decided that I am going to try the Runner's World FIRST training method using their 3 plus 2 workout plan.  I have noticed that as my miles have started to go up, my shin pain has returned.  No concerns about stress fractures at this time but due to my recent history, I am pretty wary about going down that road again.  This method focuses on less miles with only three days running per week.  In addition to that, at least two days are spent cross training.  On the days that I run, I will be focusing on higher yield, higher intesity workouts.  I plan to start this next week but today I decided to give my longer run a try using this workout.  I planned to run the 8.9 miles at 7:44 pace.  I actually felt good all run and actually came in a little faster at about 7:36/mile.  Felt great.  I now plan to cross train tomorrow and get in a tempo-type run later in the week.

Nice run with Rick today.  Cool windy fall day.  7:43 pace.

Started with an easy two miles to begin the run.  Miles 2-5 were run at threshold pace or almost exactly 7 min/mile.  Got me breathing pretty hard but felt strong.

I planned for the pace of this run to be about 7:47 pace for then entire run.  In the end, it ended up being 7:37 but that includes the beginning mile that I was using as a warmup (8:38 pace) and the cool down mile at the end (9 min pace).  When you subtract out those miles, I averaged about 7:05 min/mile for the middle 7.5 miles on a pretty hilly course.  That is strange as I felt stronger for this run than I did two days ago running 3 miles at the same pace.  I guess you never know what kind of day you are going to have but I am very pleased so far with my progress.  I feel my fitness is starting to advance quickly now and my runs are getting stronger and stronger.