Track and Field Blogs - Dom Maio

I've started the task of upping my mileage. I'm planning on hitting a 55mile week. This will be the most I have ever run in one week. I took about 3weeks of build up and backed off a bit last week before getting ready to build up. My easy pace is no longer what most people I know would think of as easy pace. I consistently hit 6:30-6:40 pace every time I run now. One day I ran a 10k at 6:22pace two days before a race and thought did I run too hard? When I ran 6:50pace most of last summer I asked myself the same question and the answer is no. I ran the exact time I wanted to for the race and if anything affected the race it was the sleep the night before. Most of the time you might think of easy run as just recovery and almost meaningless leg bashing to strengthen your legs for the upcoming season. Almost like a test of many miles before slowly introducing fartlek runs and then intervals later to increase intensity. When I do my easy runs I keep my form in mind and lock in a tempo and sometimes silently count or think of a tempo 1 2... 1 2. Most importantly I pay attention to my breathing at that tempo. I want everything to be smooth and relaxed. This way I know that I'm running easy. I find it very difficult to hit 7minute pace or sometimes 6:50 pace now. I haven't hit those paces in awhile. I've run much much slower than that pace, but I always have done it after very hard days. After the very long runs I did on Monday and during my run at Parkside I started to feel like I might get Achilles problems if I ran this far again. I don't think it helps that I've got a nice bruise on my hip from slipping on a tile floor before this past week. It's not affecting my running, but I am being more careful this week to make sure I don't get hurt while stepping into one of my weaknesses....High mileage.