The last two weeks - life (and death) intervenes

My mother and sister were visiting on the week on 10/4 since my niece was getting married out here. I just didn't feel like running on Tuesday of that week. That workout (long tempo on the track) has been suffering for a few weeks due to problems with my right soleus (see previous months) and disruptions (see previous weeks). I will be going to Arizona for 3 consecutive weekends starting Halloween weekend in order to clean up my brother's house. That will disrupt my long run on Saturday which has been progressing steadily. So I'm using this opportunity to move my workouts to more of a Lydiard schedule which I was pretty close to anyway. So the plan is to get the weekdays into that schedule over the 3 weeks when I will be in Arizona on weekends. Then I'll see where my long run is on the 3rd weekend in November. Hopefully I won't lose anything and I'll be able to resume with a long run around 26 miles.
So here are the last two weeks:

• 1st week
  
• 10/4 - 7, 5@7:34 pace
  
• 10/5 - 4 easy
  
• 10/6 - 2 just didn't feel like it.
  
• 10/7 - 11.33 on trails, 2308 vertical
  
• 10/8 - 8.38 on trails, 1405 vertical
  
• 10/9 - 24.25 on trails, 4929 vertical, 13:06 pace
  
• 10/10 - nothing (niece's wedding)
  
• 2nd week
  
• 10/11 - 7, 5@7:27 pace
  
• 10/12 - 4 easy
  
• 10/13 - 1.25 (soleus complaint)
  
• 10/14 - 7.56 on trails, 1378 vertical
  
• 10/15 - 1 easy
  
• 10/16 - 25.93, 5405 vertical, 14:11 pace
  
• 10/17 - nothing (memorial service for my brother)
  

September

Summary:
I stopped struggling in September and started progressing. The keys to this were:

• 3 hill workouts per week
  
• Consistent schedule of track workouts on Mon and Wed, trail on Thu, Sat and Sun, easy on Tue and Fri
  
• Gradual increase of 1 mile per week for track workouts (combined) and 1 mile per week on long run.
  

Mon	Pace	Tue	Wed	Pace	Thu	Vert	Fri	Sat	Vert	Pace	Sun	Vert	Total	Vert
			4				5	16.93	2962	14:10	7.5	1378	48.5	5140
7	8:11	4	9	7:52	7.5	1378		18.18	3336	13:02	7.5	1378	53.3	6092
7	8:22	3.25	10	7:52	7.5	1378		19.86	3812	12:56	7.5	1378	55.2	6568
7	7:36	4	10	7:28	7.5	1378		21.88	4485	16:27	7.5	1378	58	7241
7	7:54	4			7.5	1378							49.7	7717

Note that I hit my goal pace of 7:30 for my long tempo run. Now all I have to do is double the distance.
Note also that I have 2 miles warmup/warmdown for my track workouts so the actual miles for Monday topped out at 5 and Wed at 8.

Weekly Update - 9/27 - 10/3

• Mon - (track) 7, 5 at 7:54
• Tue - (park) Easy 4
• Thu - (trails) 7.56 w/1378 vertical
• Sat - (trails) 23.56 w/ 4961 vertical (14:04 pace)
• Sun - (trails) 7.56 w/1378 vertical
• Total - 49.68 w/7717 vertical

Saturday was 1.7 miles farther than last week and I ran it 25 minutes faster with no big drop in energy at the end. This was due to eating sweet potatoes during the run and probably some conditioning from last week.

When I came back from my run on Tuesday, my wife told me that my brother had hung himself. I spent Wednesday talking with my younger daughter.