Catching Up (on posting)

It's been almost a week since the last post - been a little busy.  The rest of the week went down as follows:

Wednesday saw a return to the gym for the first time in I don't know how long (great to be back) followed by a nice steady 5-miler.  Thursday's run was about 6.5 miles at a slightly easier pace, and Friday was 4.5 miles at a good steady clip.

Saturday was the threshold workout which wound up being nothing more than a 2-mile run at 5:46 pace.  (4-miles w/ warm up and cool down)

Sunday was supposed to be the long day, but the weather was lousy and I felt like taking a break - so a big fat zero for Sunday.  

This week sees the return of the long interval sessions (finally!)  Tuesday's workout is going to be a bear, but I'm really looking forward to it.  It's been too damn long since I've run at a halfway decent pace.  Threshold running is difficult because of the length of the runs vs the short rests - but the fact of the matter is, 5:40 pace puts me squarely in no-man's land:  Too fast to be comfortable, too slow to be fun.  (as a result I can't say I enjoy those sessions much)

Of course long intervals hurt like hell and I'm sure I'll be hating it about halfway through every single session I do - but at least I'll feel like I'm out of "base mode" and finally training once again to run middle distance races.  (although it's been difficult to tell w/ my non-racing history, that really is the point of this whole thing!)

Training:

Wed, 3/18:  lifting (upper-A, light legs, abs)  stretching, rolling

PM  5-miles @ 6:52 pace

Thurs, 3/19:  6.5 miles @ 6:59

Fri, 3/20:  4.5 miles @ 6:45

Sat, 3/21:  4 miles including 2-miles tempo @ 5:46 pace  (if you can call it that - just 2 lousy miles)

Sun, 3/22:  Off (unscheduled)  Weather sucked, felt I'd rather take a break.  (for shame!!)

Bad Day

Today I hit the track for the 4-mile Tempo run.  I pushed out from Wednesday to Thursday again, however the reason this week was due to residual adductor/hamstring soreness from Monday's weightlifting session.  I ran a couple of easy days on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I certainly felt ready to go this morning.

At 200m into the run I knew something was wrong - I was having a difficult time breathing and I felt as though I was already 2-3 miles into the run.  Very odd.  The first half mile came in right at 3:00 which was slow.  I picked it up a little and finished the first mile in 5:56 - right on pace (expectation was 5:57-5:55-5:54-5:52 for the 4-miles) but I didn't feel well at all.  I came through mile-2 in 6:00 exactly and just shut it down.  My breathing was awful, and my HR was slightly elevated even though the pace was slow.  Initial thought - "what the hell just happened!  How do I have trouble breathing 200m into a 4-mile run!?"  

In all honesty, I still don't know what went wrong.  My body was simply in no mood to run today.  Physically the adductors are still a little sore, perhaps my stride length could suffer a bit, but that wasn't the issue.  My quad was no different than last week, so that wasn't the issue.  No, from a muscle/joint perspective I was certainly OK.  Maybe I'm coming down w/ a bug?  I don't know, but if I am I've run under the weather before and it hasn't bothered me too much - I don't think that's it either.

After a few hours to reflect I came up w/ the only explanation that would seem to make sense:  a general slacking in the taking care of myself department over the past 2-3 weeks.  Sleep has been down, nutrition has been lax, and I essentially stopped taking vitamins after I ran out a week ago.  I doubt any one of those things would matter all that much, but perhaps combined along w/ some slight soreness in the legs adds up to a bad day.  Has to be something, right?  I didn't just lose a whole bunch of fitness in 72-hours.  

So I'm not going to worry about it.  Here's the plan.  #1 - Take the rest of the day off.  #2 - Make sure my nutrition is back to where it should be and take the vitamins every day.  #3 - Get some sleep!  #4 - Throttle back the efforts for a few days.  

I'm going to take a very easy day tomorrow, then run a few up-tempo miles on Sat in the 6:10 range and see how that feels - unless I have a legit physical issue this should be pretty easy.  If I struggle, then something is physically wrong.  If I'm OK, I'll take a couple more easy days and then look to get back into the workouts.  

Training:

Tue, 11/11:  AM  4-miles @ 7:25 pace

                    PM 6-miles @ 7:28 pace, HR-144

Wed, 11/12:  lifting (upper-B, abs)  stretching, rolling

                       6-miles @ 7:05 pace, HR-148

Thurs, 11/13:  3-miles, including 2-miles @ 5:58 pace.  (should have been 4-mile Tempo.  trouble breathing from outset, stopped after 2-miles)

Tempo Effort w/ a Twist

My threshold work the past 3-weeks has been at about 5:55 - 5:58 pace.  This included 3 x 1-mile w/ 1-minute rests, a 3-mile Tempo Run, and of course the dreaded 2-mile repeats w/ 2-minute rests.  

Being that the third workout (the 2-mile repeats) was the first time I had any difficulty, coach decided to change up my effort today.  I imagine she wants to get more of a handle on where I'm at - so instead of doing 1-mile cruise intervals again (which was on the schedule) she wanted me to do another 3-mile Tempo Run - with a twist.  This time, back off to 6:10 pace - the idea here being that perhaps the 5:55 - 5:58 pace is more at the "front end" of my T-pace, such that I can handle the easier workouts at that pace, but the tougher T-workouts are slightly out of reach for me.  So the plan was to shift the Tempo Run to the "back end" of the T-range (about 6:10) and then after that effort, take the standard short rest of 1-minute per mile (so 3-minutes in this case) and then run another 1-mile at T-pace where the goal was to run a very controlled effort but to pick the tempo up to slightly under 6:00 for the mile.  

I imagine that by me getting pre-fatigued w/ the 3-mile tempo run at the "back end" pace, she would learn something about my current fitness by seeing how that 4th mile went.  

So I ran my 3-miler at 6:10 pace.  For whatever reason I was expecting it to be a total walk in the park, and it was not - I actually needed to concentrate a little during that middle mile to make sure I didn't lose the pace.  The good news was that after the effort was over, it only took a minute and 20 seconds, for my HR to recover down to 128.  By the time the 3-minute rest was up, I felt completely ready to run.  

Probably a little too ready - I went out too fast on the 4th mile and had to purposely slow myself down on the second half of the first lap which still came in at 1:23.  After that I made the adjustment, but as it often times happens, I slowed a little too much for my liking.  So I picked it back up a bit and finally ran a nice consistent pace for the last 2-laps.  No kick here - didn't want to 'alter the data'.  I came across the finish in 5:52.  What does it mean?  I don't know.  I sent the info over to the coach and perhaps she'll be able to determine the pace at which I should be running most of these workouts going forward.  

Training:

10/1:  6-miles including 4 @ T-pace.  3-mile Tempo Run @ 6:10 pace, followed by 3-min break, then 1-mile @ 5:52.  Ave/Max HR of Tempo Run - 161/167, Ave/Max HR of 4th mile - 163/169

Tough Day to Run

Yesterday's attempt to run my workout turned into a total fiasco.  For starters, the temps are up again, so that wasn't going to help.  Second, I tried to get to the track early to beat the heat, but that didn't work as #1 I wound up leaving the house about a half hour later than I wanted, and #2 this is a community college track and school just started this week. . . . so EVERY parking lot was full.  I literally drove around for 45 minutes going from lot to lot in order to find a spot.

So at this point, by the time I finish my warm up it's almost noon (as opposed to what I wanted to be a 10:30 start) - and it's hot as hell.  Making matters worse, there was some sort of Physical Education class at the track and their deal was to either walk or slow jog around the track - and there was about 100 of them!

They hadn't started their slog yet so I tried to get in some of the workout before the herd trampled the track.  I got in my first 2-miles @ 5:58 pace, took my break and then started the next run.  After another mile at the same pace the herd was starting and I was just in no mood to weave in and out of 100 walkers in that heat so I pulled the plug.

Needless to say I was pissed off - mostly at myself for not going ahead and at least finishing the 4th mile anyway.  A while later I came to realize that even though the workout didn't go as well as I'd have liked, the reality was I ran about the same workout as last week and the week before - w/ and extra 15-18 degrees of temperature.  

Looking at it that way, it wasn't a total failure - but still I felt like I hadn't done enough.  So later in the early evening I went back to the track to get in a few 800m reps.  However, when I got there the parking lot was STILL FULL - at 6:30pm!!  I only needed to drive around for 20-minutes this time, but I still wasn't happy.  Once I got to the track, things got worse yet again when there was some track club taking up all but the 3 inside lanes. . .  and then, get this - a ladies fitness club (about 50-60 of them) getting ready to walk laps around the only 3-lanes left - and they all had matching T-shirts and hats.  My first thought was - "these ladies probably paid a hefty sum to join this 'club' where they got shirts and hats ($15 value) and are essentially paying someone to watch them walk around a track".  Second thought was - "what the hell am I going to do now?"  

Well, if I didn't feel like weaving in between 100 college students who at the very least would attempt to get out of your way once in a while, I sure as hell wasn't going to spend my evening weaving in between a bunch of old ladies who I'm sure knew nothing of track etiquette and might not even be able to hear me!  

The gals were doing their stretching before the big walk-a-thon and looking at them try to stretch I figured they might be there for a while, so I said "let's get in a good 1200m run and go from there".  

First lap 1:11, right on pace - and then w/ the way my day was going was there ever any doubt. . . ladies decide to bag the stretching and start the walking.  Now I'm in my 2nd lap and I'm literally dodging left and right like a fighter pilot trying to stay out of the crosshairs of the plane behind me.  Totally broke any concentration I had, and at one point I actually stepped off the track entirely to avoid a 120 year old man who was not part of the group but I guess decided to join in on the fun and walk as slow as possible in lane-1.  No doubt he was deaf or very close to it.  Next thought that popped into my head "shit, I'm going to have to pass that guy again".  Then as I approached the end of the 2nd lap it suddenly occurred to me that "oh yeah, I'm trying to run a decent rep here!"  Second lap - 1:21, "dammit!"  I'd like to pick it up but there's just too many of them.  I managed to increase the pace a little, but now I'm zeroing in on the old man - I think he's aged 10 more years during the last lap, he looks to be at least 130 now.  Is he going to hear me coming, my guess is no so I plan to swing out to lane-2.  Just then the steps to his right and is now on the line separating the lanes and is essentially taking up two lanes - and then he stops completely and just stands there right as I'm coming up on him.  Great, swerve to the inside - off the track again.  Now I've got only about 150m to go and I pick the pace up as best I can .  Later a check of the Garmin showed the final 150m at a pace of about 4:15 - 4:20/mile, but the damage had long since been done.  Final lap - 1:14, Total time - 3:46.  Awful.  Just awful.

No way I'm doing that again - workout over.  Being that I probably shouldn't have been out there that evening anyway, leaving was not the worst thing in the world.  I was so irritated by the entire day - what a disaster.  I couldn't get one damn thing to go smoothly - and that's probably why I went back to the track - I just wanted to run w/ no interruptions and I figured it would be clear by 6:30 - 7:00 pm.  There's just something that I find very relaxing about running some reps in that 13-15 mph range - hoping it would take my mind off the previous session - but not even that worked out today.  

Training:

9/24:  5.5 miles including 3 miles @ 5:58 pace (2-min break between miles 2 and 3) and 1200m in 3:46

Tempo Time, for my wife too!

My wife Joan is training for a half-marathon she'll be running in January.  She's done a couple of these before, but this time she's planning on setting a PR.  We got a nice program for her which gives her about 17-weeks to get ready from this point.  Today was going to be her first tempo run.  We were to meet at the track at about 11:40 this morning.

As I blathered on for about 5 paragraphs yesterday, I was not feeling great about my upcoming Tempo run.  The reason can really be boiled down to one simple statement I made yesterday:

". . . knowing how I approach these things, regardless of what I tell myself, I know once it's time to run I'm going to put that peddle down somewhere in the first 2-miles leaving me an absolute bear of a 3rd mile. . ."

When I arrived at the track I saw the football groundskeeper was working on the field.  The issue was that his John Deere was sitting in lanes 1 and 2 somewhere around the 50 yard line.  Meaning, that every single lap I was going to need to swing out into lane-3 and then come back in.  I thought, "great, just what I need, an extra few yards every lap".  

I finished my warm up and stretching before Joan arrived, which worked out pretty well.  I'd do my run during her warm up and then I'd be able to run my cool down along side her for her last 2-miles when I was sure she'd rather not be going around the oval over and over again by herself.  

My plan was to run the first mile in about 6:05 and then ramp it down to about 6 flat and see how it went from there - but like I said, I know how I run these things, and I knew deep down that there was no way I'd see a mile time starting w/ a 6 unless I got into trouble.  As I passed the John Deere on the first lap (about 150m in) I took a look down to see that my pace was somewhere in the 5:35 area - need to slow down.  I managed to correct the pace and I hit the first mile in 5:58.  (which was the EXACT pace I hit in the first cruise interval last week)  I held steady for the first half of the second mile and at that point I started thinking "when is this going to get uncomfortable - can I make it to the 3rd mile before it starts to become a problem?"

The answer was "yes".  Second mile split was 5:55 - the EXACT same time as my 2nd cruise interval last week!  Wow, this is a carbon copy of last week so far - but this time I'm NOT getting the 1-minute breaks between miles.  A quick check of the HR showed 167 - not too bad, only a tick higher than the max HR of the 2nd interval last week.  

Now on to the tough part - the last mile.  Last week, after another 1-minute break I hit a 5:51 to close things out.  I figure no way I can do that here, I'm just looking for another sub-6.  I started to feel it during the 2nd lap of the last mile, but just like last week it wasn't too bad.  I felt like I was holding the pace pretty well, and with about 600m to go I started picking it up just a bit.  I really didn't look at the watch for the final 2-laps, but when I crossed the finish and saw my time of 17:44, I quickly realized that my last mile split was, you guessed it - 5:51.  

I had run the EXACT same times for the each of the three miles in both workouts - but unlike last time where I got a 1-minute break between each mile - this time it was straight thru!  First thought at that point was to go check the heart rates - how much harder did I work to get that?  I was quite surprised by the result,  ave/max HR for each mile:

Cruise Intervals last week:  155/162, 161/166, 164/167

Tempo Run this week:  154/164, 166/167, 167/169

Of course the average HR of the 2nd and 3rd miles will be higher during the Tempo run because I'm not starting from a 130 HR or so like I am in the intervals - but the max HRs are very similar on those last 2-miles, meaning I really didn't work much harder at all!  That was quite a surprise.  Needless to say, finishing a 3-mile run in 17:44 felt pretty good!

Of course, when it was time for my wife to do her run the groundskeeper had finished up and was out of the way.  (yes I had to run around that damn thing 12 times!)  She did very well and ran each mile faster than the last.  We're going to monitor her paces and HRs closely the first couple of weeks and make any necessary adjustments, but so far so good.

Tomorrow's supposed to be an off day for running, but I may sneak out and get in an easy 5-miles in the afternoon.

Training:

9/17:  7-miles including 3-mile Tempo Run in 17:44 (5:58, 5:55, 5:51)