Heart Break – Week 5 Recap

Welp. I’ll forget about April for a moment. Next race will be a 2000m steeplechase on March 11. I’ve got 5 weeks to get in “don’t embarrass yourself” shape.

Went to a small track meet hosted by the University of Hawaii track team today. After watching our women’s team, I told one of the ladies I would run in the open 2000m steeplechase event next month. For starters, I’ve enjoyed working for the UH athletic department. The girls ask me pretty regularly if I’ll jump in one of the meets. Seeing as how I’m mostly out-of-shape for that sort of thing, I would have rather had until April at the least. Alas, March is the last open event of the school year, so it has to happen soon.

5 weeks. Not a lot of time for base building. Speed it is. Speed and recovery and more speed and more recovery. Do what I gotta do.

Recap

This week kinda sucked training wise. 10-miler on Sunday left me with a tight IT band and later a sore knee. Ran through it on Monday in a decent “sprint” workout (more below). Shut it down until today’s 3 miles. Not as productive as I had hoped. That said, my estimated 5K time improved from about 24:00 to 22:00. The gains should come pretty quickly over the next two weeks before the trench warfare sets in and plans have to be a little more deliberate.

Spring 2017 Goal Progress

1. Build endurance (today). Despite only three runs this week, I think “Mission Accomplished” is accurate. Solid 3-mile easy run on Saturday. On the right track.
2. Complete 80% of planned strength/recovery workouts. (April 15). Nope. 3-for-7 this week. Sunday, Monday and Saturday night. Gotta do better. Just get the situps in, man. No reason not to be 100% next week.
3. Run a race in late April (April 22). No progress here. I will be running a race in mid-March though. Should still generate a list of April options next week.
4. Start May in 18:30 5K shape (April 30). Estimated 5k dropped from 24:00 to 22:00 this week. That’s with 3 days of running. Will get a better feel for progress this coming week. So far, so good.

 

Run of the Week

Not much to choose from here. Good to get an interval session in on Monday before the knee soreness crept in. Good one to build a foundation on too. Will repeat this every Monday until whenever.

 

Unrelated to running

Mental health matters. Not a huge believer in my ability to think my way into positive mental states though. Generally, either try to address any pressing concerns or just eat, sleep and exercise better. Been popping the vitamins and water a little more consistently now (multivitamin, iron, Vit. D, fish oil, magnesium, probiotic)…and generally speaking, things just feel a little easier. Sleep’s been good. Bringing positive energy to work. Placebo effect maybe? I don’t know.

Just my ramblings for the week…look forward to a solid week next week of running. Ya know…don’t care who wins the Super Bowl tomorrow. Ready for next football season already.

 

Heart Break

Can’t believe it’s been two years since I’ve posted on this thing. From the looks of it, a lot of people who I used to read on WordPress have stopped too. Time to find new pages to read, I guess.

I love running. Since dropping the 5k PR about two years ago, I really haven’t run consistently to be honest. Not long after my best race, I wore down from the constant hard runs and the Hawaii heat and humidity. Heck, maybe I just got complacent. In any case, running for time hasn’t been that big a deal in the past couple of years. I think I have more in tank now. I want to make another go at it. I’m not even close at the moment. Rough guess…maybe 6-7 minutes off the pace right now. With consistent running, I should quickly approach the 20-minute barrier for the distance mid-to-late February. Then the hard work begins. Rough target for a personal best (16:58) in the 5K should be around August, if everything goes to plan.

For the next few months, until the end of April, the goal will be to get in shape and to set up a great summer of running (which, honestly, I’ve never had). Since about 2009, I’ve organized my years into three 16-week segments with some rest weeks in between. The first segment typically runs from January to late April. Today actually kicks off Week 5 in what I call the “Spring” segment. Fairly boring stuff so far, and I’ve probably run for about 10 days in the month of January. Hardly a great start. Run plan for this spring is pretty basic. Alternate”easy” runs with intervals. That’s it. One for stamina. The other for race-prep.

The biggest challenge will be staying motivated with no personal bests in sight. Good life prep too. I’ll want to run long after I’m not capable of doing my all-time best. So here we go…Goals for this Spring in order of appearance and what I plan to do this week to contribute.

1. Build endurance (today). Not really specific about this goal because I don’t have as much control over the specifics. Basically involves running faster paces at an easier effort as measured by heart rate. Not perfect, but it’s the tool I have. Should see big gains early by just getting off the couch.  
2. Complete 80% of planned strength/recovery workouts. (April 15). Just want to be balanced here. I have some assortment of pushups, situps, squats, jumps and foam rolling planned for every night. I’ve always let this part of the plan go, but not this time. I’m tracking. I want to feel strong. These will be night workouts. Shouldn’t miss more than 1-2 days per week.
3. Run a race in late April (April 22). Simple. Need to find a race that I can run in. I’ve got a two-week window to get it done in the training schedule. April 22 and April 29. Need to sign up. Big motivator.
4. Start May in 18:30 5K shape (April 30). And contrary to everything I’ve posted above, if I want to think about being at my best at the end of August, I’ve got to be in striking distance beforehand. I won’t have to wait until April to see progress on this. I have a “key workout”, 4×800, that I run on Wednesdays. While typically 3×1600 gives me a better idea of how a 5k run will go, 4×800 will suffice if the effort leaves me feeling as though I have more to give. I will consider this goal met if I complete the workout averaging 2:37 per rep and not maxing out HR (<95%) at the end of April.

Alright. This this meets the whole S.M.A.R.T. goals criteria. Specific (with the exception of #1). Measurable (numbers everywhere). Attainable (Done it before. Not looking for a PR). Relevant (I love this stuff). Timely (done in April). Thanks Internet.

Favorite Run Last Week: 

Well since I didn’t run last week, here’s today. 10-miler. Progressive run. Went faster with every mile. But still have a lot of work to do. So sore. I’ll look back on this run as the season progresses.

Unrelated to Running…

I was a HUGE New Edition fan as a kid. You know, the singing group. They were so COOL! Or you don’t know. But you can learn about them. BET recently produced a New Edition biopic last week. It was terrific. 3 nights. 6 talented men. 1 great story. For the next month, I’ll be listening to my guys over the next month and pounding out these miles. This also explains why I will categorize these segments of posts over the next 3 months as Heart Break.  It’s the title of N.E.’s most commercially successful album. Just getting back to what I love. Running and music.

Run safe everyone…

(guess we have to pay WordPress to post videos now…lame).