Grinding

August 19-25

Last week ended on a high note, and I hoped to carry that forward into this week. Unfortunately, that didn't exactly happen.

Monday morning my wife and I had a meeting planned for 8:45. We figured we'd be out of there in a half hour, so I should be running by 9:30 am. Later than I'd like, but not bad. Well, the meeting went about 90 minutes long. My wife had an important 11:30 am meeting she had to prep for, and she needed to pick up some documents from downtown. Not enough time to do both. I offered to help, knowing it wouldn't be good for my run. I dropped her off at home, picked up her documents, and brought them home with just enough time for her to head out the door for her meeting.
I started to gather my things for my run, and a few more things started to conspire against me. I was short on nutrition because I keep most of my supplies at the store, and had given a few of my home gels away. It was also getting hot, and I was really concerned about being short a gel or two. I normally run with two handhelds full of water, but I switched one of those for a sports drink. That would give me the carbs needed, and top of the electrolytes, too. So, out the door I head at 11:50 am for 35k of joy.
Basically, it was a terrible run. I wasn't taking my gels as frequent as I normally do since I was short, and the sports drink was causing all kinds of trouble in my stomach. By the end of the run I was just willing myself to make it to the 35k mark and home. It was the worst long run this year by far.

I decided Tuesday off was a good idea again, partly because I had to bike Emily to and from daycare again, and partly because I was still really spent.

Wednesday I pushed my run back to the afternoon, and went out the door around 3 pm. It's been much hotter this week than the past few weeks, and my legs still felt pretty awful. I ended up getting 14k in, but the first 10k was done around 40-50 seconds per kilometer slower than I normally run. Positive thing is I did the work.

Thursday became the run to daycare day, so it was an easy 10k. It was still stinking hot out, even early, and I still felt sluggish. As the day went on, I got a little stressed about not hitting the mileage I had planned for 2 weeks in a row. I was feeling better, so I decided I would just run home. It's cheaper than taking the bus, and gets me home around the same time. So, just under 8k home, for an 18k day. The second run felt good, and I thought it was a good day overall.

Friday I realized how tired I have been. I've ramped up training relatively quickly, and I haven't been compensating for it rest or nutrition wise. I haven't felt like this in about 15 years, and I just don't have the time to dedicate to recovery that I did then. That being said, I was fixated on doing 2 x 20 minutes tempo, and getting the same 25k in that I did the week before. Numbers and mileage matter a lot to me (throwback to the competitive days), and I really wanted to get over 90k for the week. I decided to do an out and back on the Drive In run, turning around at highway 7, and heading up Stone Rd. hill into the Arboretum before finishing. I felt crummy from the start, and decided to look at my watch as little as possible. The first 10 minutes felt good, but the back half of the first 20 felt pretty rough. Splits were about the same as the week before, which was good considering I felt bad. The second tempo was basically the same. First 10 felt good, then I felt rough going up Stone Rd hill, and for the tail end of the 20 minutes. I finished my 25k, but am very grateful that I have a down week coming.

Sometimes, I find it very easy to forget it's not 10 years ago, and I'm doing very different training than I was then. I don't recover as quickly (partly because of fitness, partly because I'm 10 years older), and I'm not nearly at the same fitness level. I haven't increased volume like this since I went to university, and I just doing have the time to devote to recovery. I'm pretty run down from the last 3 weeks, and now need to scale things back. This is still a learning process for me. I'm discovering what I can do, and what I need to set limits on or look to add later. Overall, I think I'm getting much stronger, but I'm lucky I haven't hurt myself by doing things like 3 35k runs in 15 days when I've only done that distance a handful of times in my life.

Next week: Recover. I'll go with 3-4 runs during the week, but won't stress too much about volume. I'll drop my long run down to 25k, do a light track workout on Tuesday using the bike to warm up and cool down, and will do a lower volume long interval workout on Friday. An easy day on Wednesday or Thursday will be it for me.

Weekly total: 5 runs, 92km