The Return – Week 10

Howdy,

Starting to see a few other posters come out from underneath the snow and start their training blogs again. Nice to know I’m not alone. Me. Me. Me. So ok, there are people on the streets now running. It’s beautiful. Poor souls thinking 30 degrees is a paradise. I won’t hate. Weather’s supposed to get a little warmer in Indy this week (up to the 60s).  Probably consider packing in some morning miles once it warms up some more. Otherwise, things are progressing nicely as they are.

 

Last week’s recap:

Sunday: Rest

*Never difficult to rest, is it? Not for me. Good day.

Monday: Weights (5×5 stronglifts)

*Still dragging on the bench press, other lifting increasing on schedule.

Tuesday: 8x200m w/6 min rest

*Bam! Great work in the gym. If I could do this without the rest, I’d be in Rio in 2016.

Wednesday: Weights (Stability exercises)

*Fun new workout on the Bosu ball. Lots lot of leg quivering.

Thursday: 8x400m w/3 min rest

*Another terrific speed workout. Stayed late at the gym for this one.

Friday: Weights (Stability)

*Useless. One-legged stands and stuff. I’ll never do it again. Back to regular weights next week.

Saturday: 8x800m w/1 min, 30 sec rest

*First one of these I’ve completed this year. Fourth attempt and a good one.

 

Fiber

Welp…what to eat. Been a struggle trying to nail down the nutritional side of things for a while, but that won’t stop me from trying. Latest gimmick…increase the amount of fiber in my diet. Read online somewhere that we should take in 14g of fiber daily for every 1,000 calories consumed. Same link says 38g is suitable for adults.  I’m going with 50g. Why? Because I gotta know. The whole premise is more fiber, more fullness, better portion control. Plus, the fibery foods are the good stuff (oats, beans, certain pastas), better fuel. Just don’t stand behind me this week.

 

Plan for this week:

Sunday: Rest

Monday: Weights (5×5 stronglifts)

Tuesday: 8x200m w/4 min rest

Wednesday: Weights (5×10 less weight)

Thursday: 8x400m w/ 2 min rest

Friday: Weights (5×15 lowest weight)

Saturday: 8x800m w/1 min rest

*Same times as last week – running. Just going to cut that rest time down and challenge myself. As far as weights, I’ll pattern it after running. Up the reps, drop the rest and lower the resistance (intensity) throughout the week. Intensity. That reminds me…

 

“The further on the edge, the hotter the intensity.”

 

That’s relevant somehow.

See you next Sunday!

The Fall – Week 13, Sprints

Workout: Warm [1.5 mi.], 4x400m @ 1:09-1:19 w/ 400 jog, Cool [1.5 mi.] Weather: 48 degrees, cloudy, windy.

Recap: Another good failure.

It is very rare or almost impossible that an event can be negative from all points of view.” – Dalai Lama

Took the car to the auto shop this morning to get it ready for the road trip to Indianapolis this weekend. Figured I might as well get a run during the repairs. Diverted to a middle school once I realized that the park where I wanted to do my workout was too far away. Turns out the middle school was too far away as well. Ended up walking about 1/2 mile after my warmup. Usually when I go to the middle school track, some gym coach comes out and kicks me off the track. Something about child safety, strangers on campus during school…blah, blah, blah. I figured it’s cold and windy outside, so I shouldn’t have any problem today, right? Wrong. Immediately after knocking off the first 400m, I heard an army of shrieking middle girls – hardly dressed for 40-degree weather. Flying towards the track. Coach rushed them out of the gym for reasons I can’t understand. In any case, that was my cue to leave. Mid-workout.

I kept the workout going … proper rest period and all. Ran out to the road in front of the middle school and finished the workout there. The road move slightly downhill, which allowed me to pick up a little speed along the way.

Rep 1: 1:25

Rep 2: 1:24

Rep 3: 1:18

Rep 4: 1:19

Here’s the great part of the workout. All of the times were on the slow end of my target range. It was cold and windy, and I was running in a place I normally don’t run. But rather than quit today and say I didn’t have it, I kept going. The speed is important, no doubt, but so is the effort. I focused on my mechanics, keeping the arms pumping, good posture, and straight-ahead motion. Oddly enough, it got a little easier. I’ve taken three rules out of the experience to apply to my future workouts.

1. Mechanics: Make sure the running form is solid going to begin with. No flailing.
2. Pace: If possible, ensure that the first repetition or mile of a workout is within goal pace. Maintain form afterwards.
3. Progression: Every week, interval rest periods should decrease. Length of long runs should increase.

Over time, the speed and the stopwatch will catch up to my satisfaction. But I have to put forth the effort and make sure the workouts are progressively challenging. I also feel like with these rules, that it will be hard to view future workouts as “failures” as long as I stay healthy and put forth a good effort.

The Fall – Week 11, Long Run

Workout: 15 miles @ 7:19 pace.  Weather: 36 degrees, partly cloudy.

Recap: Epic.

Did the run a day later this week because I spent Saturday traveling to Indianapolis. So, that meant having to cover 15 miles in a city I’ve never run in before. My goal was to complete the run without getting lost. Fortunately, the hotel where I stayed is right across the street from a trail. The trail runs alongside a river. The river trail goes for 6 miles. To complete the run I needed to:

(a) Stay on the trail, or

(b) Stay next to the river, and

(c) Perform two out-and-back routes of 12 and 3 miles, respectively.

I accomplished none of the above. 

Doesn’t mean the run wasn’t successful though. Morning weight was a little high (up 4 pounds over two days) from eating pizza and candy yesterday, but whatever. My nutrition’s a mess. And I haven’t been able to correlate “healthy eating” with good running…at least in the short term. Very cold weather for me – adjusting down about 35-30 degrees from what I’m used to running in. I did pack warm running gear for this weather and was ready to go on.

Mentally (there’s always something with me), I wanted to think of this run as five different three miles runs (5Ks). I wanted to pay as little attention to mileage as I could but stay on pace during the runs. The first couple 5Ks went well. Passed a Navy ROTC group training on the trail and gave a couple high fives to the guys and gals out there putting in the work. Good feeling. I was on pace and everything was good.

Coming back from the end of the trail, I promptly failed objectives a through c.  The trail ended at a place where I was supposed to cross the river and continue the trail on the other side. Not wanting to lose my pace, I panicked…ran away from the river and that’s when an easy run got interesting. I stopped three times over the last six miles to ask four homeless men, a police officer and a hotel valet how to get back downtown. Each of those stops meant that I had to work hard to get back on pace during the run. (The Garmin did help me a little bit by auto pausing in some places).

The 15 miles expired close to the hotel, so I was able to walk back. Closed last mile in 6:57, and finished with a 7:18 pace overall. Still having issues with my heart rate monitor early in runs though. Really have to make an effort to wet the thing better before going out. That said, these long runs are still my favorite runs during the week.

Time to eat, rest, watch football and pull out a map.

Payback Tour – Week 4, Friday

Workout: 2 miles @ 6:50 pace; core work. Weather: 46 degrees, sunny.

Recap: Whew…chill came out of nowhere. 46-degree morning at the end of May. Fun run out there. Didn’t run with headphones in preparation for tomorrow’s time trial. Nice to hear the outside world for once (birds, cars, my own feet and breathing). Made a special effort to keep the strides short and not reach with my legs. Made the run really nice and smooth and kept the HR down too. Going to try to up the carb intake today so I can hold a little more water. Plan for tomorrow: walk a warmup, keep the strides short through mile 1, and work hard the rest of the way. Have a great day and thanks for reading!

Dirty, Dirty – Week 6 of 16

Summary

Rough week turned good.

Sunday started with me giving up on a 10-mile run because I did something mess up the timing on my Garmin. Honestly, I think I was tired that day and just wanted to bring it in. Didn’t need much of an excuse. The rest may have been a good thing though. The tempo runs didn’t get any faster at the 88-92% HR this week, BUT they felt a lot easier for some reason. I felt like I had something in the tank at the end of all three runs. Looking back over the schedule this year, I can see the improvement from early January pretty clearly. Tempo runs at 3 miles are down from 6:56 pace to 5:46 pace. Recovery runs are down from 11-12 minute pace to 9 minute pace. Still, these last two weeks, I have plateaued a little bit. I feel great, but the production has slowed a little. Going keep focusing on nutrition (especially protein), water and sleep. Breakthrough might be around the corner.

Lots and lots of treadmill running this winter. Not as bad as people say it is. That said, I’ll be happy when it warms a little in Columbus (at least into the 40s and 50s, so I can take the faster stuff outside). For now…as in most things…patience.

 

What Motivates Me to Run:

1) Control: Let’s face it…the world’s a pretty busy place. Lots of people making lots of decisions and most of us have to live with the choices others make. For the most part, someone else determines our schedules. When we get up. When we go to work or school. When we get to come back home. Running’s one of those things where you can set the pace yourself. Whether you want to get in shape or race, you can mold it to fit your style.

2) Hope: For whatever reason, I always have this idea that tomorrow’s run is going to better than today’s. It can be faster or feel easier, but I’m always seeing some prospect of improvement down the line.

3) Addiction: I suspect that I run because I need to as well. This is probably the most powerful motivator in the toolkit. I’m not sure if it’s because I need to fill in a blank space in the spreadsheet schedule that says, “I did something today,” or if there some sort of chemical dependency going on. I do know that whatever it is, for now, is strong enough to get me out bed at night to complete a workout. It would be nice to be this addicted to another good cause as well.

 

Favorite quote from last week:

“Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

 

Last Week’s Workouts

Sun  – 2 miles “long”

Mon – 3 miles tempo (treadmill)

Tue – 3 miles easy

Wed – 3 miles tempo (treadmill)

Thu – 3 miles easy (treadmill)

Fri – 3 miles tempo (treadmill)*

Sat – 3 miles easy (treadmill)

Dirty, Dirty – Week 5 of 16

Summary

A litte late this week, but here it is…

Solid week, not spectacular. The high point was Wednesday’s run, sub-18:00 5k pace on the treadmill over 3 miles. It was a tough effort though. All three tempo runs in fact were roughly the same pace. Really can’t complain about that result.

Still too chicken to go outside on a regular basis, even though the weather is creeping back up about 30 degrees consistently now. Got outside on Saturday, which felt pretty awesome. Take some getting used to running on real concrete again. Mostly though, it was nice to see other people out again. Might get some more opportunities to step out shortly here.

Otherwise, good week. Looking for more though. Need to nail down the non-running stuff (strengthening, stretching, nutrition, rest, hydration) to get better.

 

Keywords for the Week:

1) Patience: Little disappointed that I haven’t made more progress along the tempo run front. Not bad though, but I think a breakthrough will come again soon.

2) Confidence: The hardest part about some runs is the little voice in your head saying you can’t do it. My trick, as of late, has been to write down exactly what that negative voice is saying, do the work, and then re-visit those thoughts. Confidence-building.

3) Consistency: I keep messing around with my strength and core workouts. It’s probably not helping me get stronger. Going to pick a plan and stick to it.

 

Favorite quote from last week:

“You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes… well you might find … you get what you need.” -The Rolling Stones

 

Last Week’s Workouts

Sun  – 10 miles “long”

Mon – 3 miles tempo (treadmill)

Tue – 3 miles easy (treadmill)

Wed – 3 miles tempo (treadmill)*

Thu – 3 miles easy (treadmill)

Fri – 3 miles tempo (treadmill)

Sat – 3 miles easy