110 kilometer week

A funny thing happened while racing the past three week-ends in a row. I got out of shape. I think. The problem is that I tapered for all three races. The two xc races were important for my club so I tapered for those and the half marathon was important to me so I tapered for that and the end result was 3.5 weeks of reduced volume, quality and long runs. Now I find myself 8 weeks away from my most important goal race for the spring/summer, the local half-marathon, and I am not quite where I need to be fitness wise. I also have no plan. I have been essentially deciding what to do on a day by day basis with the general guidelines of getting one lactate threshold (tempo run/intervals) and one VO2 max session in per week and running at least 80 km. This has to change, I need to plan the next 8 weeks including what work-outs I will do, how long my long runs will be and what my mileage pattern will look like. While I am working on that, I have set the (somewhat arbitrary) goal of running 110 km this week with a long run of 25 km. That would have been an easy week back when I was marathon training. These days it constitutes a challenge. In fact it will be my biggest week since before I was pregnant. If I want to take one day off (and I do) this means averaging 17 km for 5 days plus my long run. Today's 17 km run has already been put to bed. 93 km to go...