Benefits of Back to Back

"The value of the back-to-back is that you learn what it's like to run when you're not fresh. You learn about how to motivate yourself when you think, I don't want to run anymore; this is harder than I thought. But I'd rather do one longer run and then rest. Back-to-backs waste a whole weekend. If you do one longer run on Saturday, you can mow the lawn on Sunday"
Tim Twietmeyer

Until my recent marathon PR and subsequent thoughts about Boston, I have been looking towards using this year as a base for making a run at a 100 miler next year. So while I have begun to slowly add more speedwork (YUCK!), my mind really leans more towards longer runs. Last weekend, I ran 7+ on Saturday and followed it up with 18+ on Sunday for a total just over 26 miles.

This weekend, I set a goal of 2 hours runs on both Saturday and Sunday. I figured Saturday would be fairly easy, and then today, with the legs kind of tired i would add a bit more walking in and just see how I felt. Saturday, I ended up with 12.13 miles in 2 hours for an average of 9:53/mile. I ran for 18 minutes and then walked for 2 minutes and then repeated. So I ran for about 1 hr 48 min and walked for 12. Garmin indicated an aerobic workout. Felt fresh when I ended the run but by the end of the day was pretty wiped.

Waking up this morning, I know it is Mother's Day, henceforth the start of the run @ 5:17 am, and decided on running 25 minutes and walking 5 minutes. In the end, 20 min of walking and 1 hr 40 min of running, yielding 12.35 miles. Interestingly enough, I averaged 9:42 per mile and the Garmin indicated that this was a recovery run?

For all intensive purposes, I would like to try this every couple of weeks, sandwiched in between my D.D.M.C. efforts to continue building the base. I would like to just run long on one day and rest the next day and maybe that will happen once summer rolls around, but even if I have to break it up like I did, I was still home in time to as the kids were waking up. Wasn't very hard to motivate myself, especially since I had my Ipod shuffle and listened to several podcasts, one of which, Running with the Pack, is pretty interesting.