Covering Ground

Good week training wise. 52 miles vs. weekly goal of 54, 8:36 average pace. Right on target. Week 7 of the program, 18 weeks to go until race day. First week running quality sessions since before Vegas last December. All told felt pretty good. Funny how after a long stretch of base training all you want to do is run faster until a few sessions show up in the training calendar and then all of a sudden maybe easy running doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Just nerves though and legs felt good. Session
Following Daniels elite marathon plan with a few adjustments. Daniels recommends that only elite athletes use the mileages listed and that everyone else adjust the plan and run for time rather than distance with one mile being 'worth' a certain amount of time depending on the intensity: 1 mile easy equals 6 minutes running, 1 mile at threshold = 5 minutes, etc.
When I calculated total mileage using this formula I wasn't going to put in enough miles on my long runs to prep me for Boston. So, I have kept the easy miles as actual miles and substituted time goals for milage run at other intensities: M pace, T pace, etc. That way days that are just long easy runs I'll still get the mileage but when quality is added to a day I won't run over suggested mileage caps for intensity and will hopefully keep myself from injury and over-training.
First quality session of the week was before I figured out how I was going to adapt the program: 12 minutes Easy
30 minutes Marathon pace
4:45 minutes Threshold pace
25 minutes M pace
4:45 T pace
12 minutes Easy
I'm going to try and remember to wear my HR strap on the quality days just for curiosity sake.

Second quality session was more straightforward:
12 minutes Easy
6 miles Tempo
12 minutes Easy
Felt good. Workout called for 8 miles and I could have ran a couple more but wanted to keep the total tempo mileage under/close to 10% of weekly miles. At 6 miles I was already a little over.

More fun this week including some interval work tomorrow AM.

On the music front, I've been hearing a ton of covers popping up lately. I'm on the hunt for a good quality version of a Death Cab cover I've been hearing a lot lately and if I find it I'll post it. Until then, here are two very different takes on the same song. Bonus points if you know which is the original.
Merry Christmas.