Andrew's Stage 1. Over

Blogging is a truly boring thing – that’s what I feel from time to time.
Running would never be boring to me, until I try to hit my mileage up to 80 – 90 mpw. Soon.
Actually, starting right from tomorrow. My “Stage 1” training period with Andrew is over.
Time to draw some analysis.

Mar 07
Week #01 / Sun 18 - Sat 24 / 55.15 mi
Week #02 / Sun 25 - Sat 31 / 65.17 mi

Apr 07
Week #03 / Sun 01 - Sat 07 / 62.06 mi
Week #04 / Sun 08 - Sat 14 / 72.37 mi
Week #.... / Sun 15 - Sat 21 / 40.20 mi
Week in China / Sun 22 - Sat 28 / 5 mi !!!

May 07
Week #04 (again) / Sun 29 - Sat 05 / 55 + mi
Week #05 / Sun 06 - Sat 12 / 71.18 mi
Week #06 / Sun 13 - Sat 19 / 56.26 mi

I am particularly pleased with Week #5 – I do consider it the best week from the First Stage. If you wonder how the perfect week from the First Andrew’s stage looks – see this plot. You can see there, that I had only 1 additional unscheduled warmup for 2.05 miles. Actually it was truly windy that day. What does "windy" mean? Look at the picture - a broken tree 2 meters away from the entrance to my house. By the time I was doing my Hard workout, Mother Nature chilled out. Still wind could be an Issue.

Some Details on my 1st Stage:
- 90 min EZ workouts: Easy run - refreshing. I like them, target HR 140 - 145 and usually I "sink into" (this is from Andrew's vocabulary) those 90 minutes. Normally I did 10+ miles. What a nice running with sub 9:00 pace! (I guess people call it Jogging :)

- 60 min Hard workouts: I knew I could do it at 7:15. But never thought about 7:02 pace and faster pace. Run in such a manner that you can finish without going anaerobic. So, Ladies helped / forced me to run at 7:00 pace for one mile which I had expected to be slower. I didn't catch them, all they did was 400m at average 1m45s which is exactly 7:00 pace. Then they stopped and all I had to do, was keep on running with the same pace. One week later, on
Sat 5/12 I made it again. The Best 60 min Hard workout. 7:00 average pace which was a real surprice for me. There was a guy who joined me right from the the start and as his pace was close to my target pace I made attempt to compete with him. He was smaller, lighter and surely younger than me and he sustained the speed for 15 laps/quarters which is 6k so it less then 30 min. That was all he could do, but I was really thankful to him cause he did a Good Pacemaker's job for me. The rest of the distance I made alone. 1 hour at 7:00, next time I shall aim for 6:57 or so.

One of the worst Hard workout I did in Astana last week.
Sat 5/19. I met Erik at that place. Trip to Astana took almost 3 hours in a van so by the time we started I was simply dehydrated, some water we bought right before the start didn't workm, it was too late. I used to run in Flat Ethno park in the mornings or in my Stadium in PM time which is also absolutely flat. But route in Astana is quite a different thing (Paul you're lucky to have that place to run). There’s a long incline toward the bridge, decline part was with such a strong headwind, so it made the whole running process almost grueling. Slowest mile we did was at 8:11. That was a cruel lesson. Dehydration caused incredibly high HR at the slow pace. All I saw on my Tool was 160 – 161 HR.
We finished with 7.68 mi, 60:00, avg.pace 07:48, avg.HR 159.
“Just not your day to run” I heard from Erik.
(Man, although that was a tough run – thanks a lot! Your Once in a Lifetime experience is almost over. Good luck in New-Hampshire! Hope to see you again someday.)
It was last run for my Stage #1 and Conclusion I’ve drawn from Astana route is that I shall learn more about How to run non-flat routes.

- 2 hours Long runs. This is / (was?) my weekest point. I will work more on it.
If you ever read this article you know How important Long run for marathon runner's preparation - simply a crucial part.