As I’m writing this post, I’m sitting at my desk surrounded by textbooks, binders, and stacks of blank notecards. It’s beginning to hit me: tomorrow is the first day of my senior year. It seems like I’ve been waiting for senior year forever, so why does it feel so strange now? I feel like this milestone is a perfect time to look back on the past and start to get excited about the future. So when Todd suggested sharing my training log, I jumped on the idea. What better way to look towards the running that’s coming than to look back on how I prepared this summer?
The week following the state track meet, I did a lot of easy miles to burn off some stress about AP exams. I took the following week completely off, because I was in Los Angeles for the International Science and Engineering Fair. After returning to Jacksonville, summer training officially started! The exact details of each week varied greatly, so I grouped the weeks together in two, but only shared the exact details of ome week. I’m a compulsive note-taker and list-maker, and I think how detailed my log is shows that.
Weeks 1-2: I began building up mileage, so all of the runs were at a relatively easy pace. This is Week 1:
Monday- 4.5 miles
Tuesday-7 miles
Wednesday- 4.5 miles
Thursday- 6.3 miles
Friday- 4.3 miles
Saturday- 9 miles
Sunday- rest
Total Mileage Per Week: 35.4 miles
Weeks 3-4: My mileage stayed the same as the prior weeks, but I added strides at the end of each run, and time in the weight room. My coach and I have focused a lot on resistance training to try and build my finishing speed and strength. This is Week 3:
Monday- 6.3 miles with 4 x 100 strides
Tuesday- 4 miles followed by weight room
Wednesday- 7.5 miles with 4 x 100 strides, drills, and core work
Thursday- 4 miles followed by weight room
Friday- 6.3 miles with 4 x 100 strides
Saturday- rest (Thanks SAT Subject Tests)
Sunday- 9.3 miles
Total Mileage Per Week: 37.5 miles
Weeks 5-6: I really ramped up cross-training this week by adding afternoon workouts. One such workout, which I have continued all summer, takes place at “Crome”. This is a personal training gym that conducts workouts in 30 minutes. You have a given number of repetitions and sets of various exercises, and you try to finish as quickly as possible. It’s similar to cross fit, but it focuses more on body weight exercises and adds an aerobic element. This is Week 6:
Monday- 6.3 miles with 4 x 100 strides
Tuesday- AM: 4.1 miles; PM: 30 minutes of Crome
Wednesday- AM: 60 minute beach workout consisting of core, strength, drills, and a short fartlek; PM: 7 miles
Thursday- AM: 4.1 miles with 4 x 100 strides; PM: 30 minutes of Crome
Friday- AM: 6.1 miles with 4 x 100 strides; PM: 30 minutes of Crome
Saturday- 10.1 miles
Sunday- rest
Total Mileage Per Week: 37.7 miles with 150 minutes of cross training
Week 7 and 8: Some of this time period was spent at the University of Pennsylvania Track Camp. It was a great camp, and it was fun to incorporate some faster running into my training! Especially when that faster running took place in the famed Franklin Field (pictured below). It was truly amazing to run on the track where so much of running history has taken place. My mileage these weeks was a little lower because of the higher intensity of the workouts. This is Week 8:
Sunday- 1200 warm-up; 6 x 600 at tempo pace with 1 min. recovery; 1200 cool-down
Monday- AM: 1 miles warm-up; 6 x 200 at 800 pace with 2 min. recovery; 1 mile cool down; PM: Plyometric Drills
Tuesday- AM: 6 miles on trails; PM: Plyometric Drills and 2 mile shakeout jog
Wednesday- AM: 1600 time trial on Franklin Field! Everyone at the camp (including me) was very sore, but it was fun to lace up the spikes again! I did a couple miles after the time trial to shake out before my long flight back to Jacksonville.
Thursday- AM: 6.3 miles; PM: 30 min. of Crome
Friday- AM: 4.2 miles with 4 x 100 strides; PM: 20 min. on elliptical with resistance training
Saturday- 11 miles
Sunday- rest
Total Mileage Per Week: 35 miles with 165 minutes of cross training
Week 9-10: Looking back on my training log, I see a huge jump in mileage and intensity during these weeks. I think I finally began to see the results of a consistent summer of training, and I felt strong! My coach added fartleks and hill repeats. As I have said before, and as I will say again, I love fartleks. This is week 10:
Monday- AM: 1.5 mile warm-up; 6 variations of long (avg. 1:15) hill repeats; 1.5 miles cool-down; PM: 30 minutes of Crome
Tuesday- AM: 6.3 miles; PM: 60 min. on elliptical
Wednesday- AM: This is the hardest workout I did this summer. The fartlek was all in one direction on the beach, and the second half of the run consisted of running back to where I started at tempo pace. 7.2 mile Fartlek- 8 min. warm-up; 2 min. hard, 2 min. easy; 6-3; 1-1; 4-3; back in 26 minutes at Tempo Pace; PM: 30 min. of Crome
Thursday- AM: 6.3 miles with 4 x 100 strides; PM: 30 minutes of Crome.
Friday- AM: 12 miles on trails
Saturday- rest, because I was travelling to Boston!
Sunday- 8.2 mile fartlek; 10 min. warm-up; 6 min. hard, 3 min. easy; 4-2; 2-1; 6-3; 4-2; 2-1; 15 min. cool-down
Total Mileage: 45 miles with 150 minutes of cross-training
Week 11: This week, I was traveling throughout Boston and New York. After that, I went to the Princeton Cross Country Camp. Running in all three places was really enjoyable, since I was able to run in Central Park and along the Charles River, and also on some beautiful trails!
Monday- 7 miles
Tuesday- 8.3 mile fartlek; 10 min. warm-up; 8 min. hard, 4 min. easy; 6-3; 4-2; 2-1; 2 mile cool down
Wednesday- 6.3 miles
Thursday- 8 mile fartlek; 15 min. warm-up; 6 x 3 min. hard, 2 min. easy; 2 mile cool-down
Friday- rest
Saturday- 7.4 miles
Sunday- AM: 11.1 miles; PM: 90 minutes of cross training- yoga, pilates, and weight circuits
Total Mileage: 48.1 miles with 90 minutes of cross training
Week 12- The Princeton Cross Country Camp continued through this week. I tried aqua jogging for the first time ever, and I actually enjoyed it! I was able to run on some gorgeous trails here, including the “Tow Path”. Here’s a little bit of history: Companies would transport coal from Philadelphia to New York along this trail.
Monday- AM: 6.6 miles with 30 minutes of drills; PM: 2 hours of cross training- aqua jogging, circuits, yoga, and pilates
Tuesday- AM: 2 mile warm-up; 4 x 800 meters with 90 seconds recovery at tempo pace; 2 mile cool-down; PM: 2 hours of cross training- aqua jogging, circuits, yoga, and pilates
Wednesday- AM: 7 miles with 30 minutes of drills; PM: 1 hour of cross-training- aqua jogging and circuits
Thursday- 7 miles with 30 minutes of drills
Friday- AM: 8.2 mile fartlek- 10 min. warm-up; 6 x 4 min. hard, 3 min. easy; 10 min. cool-down; PM: 10 min. on elliptical to warm-up, 30 minutes of circuits
Saturday-12 miles
Sunday- rest
Total Mileage: 46.8 miles with 7 hours of cross-training
TOTAL SUMMER MILEAGE: 504 miles with 1,505 minutes of cross training.
Well, there is my training log. I was very diligent in logging just about everything, so I’m sorry if my notes and workouts seem a little jumbled! Having a training log, in my opinion, is calming, because it allows you to gain confidence. It’s much easier to believe you are truly prepared for something if you have the hard evidence. What a training log fails to capture, however, is the joy that comes with the training. A log doesn’t show how delicious pancakes are after 12 miles, or the pride in finishing a really hard fartlek strongly. It doesn’t show how satisfying a nap in the middle of the day is when you have double workouts, or how much discipline cross-training requires. There was a reason for all these miles and minutes, and with every day I find myself thinking about racing more and more. So most importantly, my log certainly doesn’t show the build-up of anticipation as summer comes to a close, official pre-season training starts, and the first race nears.
More Coverage
- Morgan's Athlete Profile
- In Her Own Words: Morgan Lucey - Not The Traditional Running Route
- In Her Own Words: Morgan Lucey - The Will To Prepare
