After a productive Oct month, I was very motivated to log 3 more quality weeks of training for CIM. Goals for this month were
1. Race Half Marathon:
This race was held in Coyote point park on Nov 5th, with 4 weeks away from CIM 2011, it was a perfect reality check. Based on my training I was hoping to run a 1:31, and decide on my goal pace at CIM. Race started out fine with a good sub 7 min effort for 1st 6.5 miles. It was all along bay trail(Oracle Trail) in San Mateo. On the way back it was total surprise, strong headwinds made running 7:30 seemed a hard task, I felt I was hardly running. I managed to keep running hard but couldn't manage any mile faster than 7:30 in the 2nd half except for last mile. Overall time of 1:35:40 was disappointing and it was clear I wasn't in 3:10 shape this time. But 3:15 or 3:20 seemed more in my range for this time.
2. log around 55mpw before starting a good tapering period.
3. focus on VO2 max workouts:
Until this month my main focus was lactate threshold workouts, now I wanted to fine tune my speed workouts and added 1200M repeats(6-8) and added few 100M strides and 400M repeats as well for last 4 weeks.
Overall in Oct and Nov I logged about 365 miles in 7 weeks with 5 quality long runs of distance 18/20miles. This was a excellent training session I had in quite a few years, infact this was my best focused marathon training since my 1st marathon in 2003.
