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

Big trouble in little Guelph

August 12-18

So, as I implied at the end of my last post, last week was HARD. I had a long, sustained effort on Monday that was also my longest run in 4 years, did a 3k time trial the next day, and did a Friday tempo which was far too hard of a effort. A weekend without running was my hope to feel better.

Monday long run came around. I wanted to go 35-36k with some tempo later into the run. I figured I would take it easier earlier in the run, and that would leave me fresher for the tempo.
About 20k into the run I knew I wasn't feeling great, but I figured it would be fine. I hit 25k and started to do the tempo. Being a bit of a slave to my Garmin these days, I was watching the pace rather than just judging the effort. Hitting my tempo time goal wasn't as easy as it should have been. I was running out near Cook's Mill and Carter Rds, and I took the trial along the scout camp back to Stone Rd. I turned to run up Stone Road hill to make my way to the Arboretum. That hill crushed me. I backed off of my pace, but the rest of my run felt like a slog. The effort was there, but the pace was not. I finished the run at the store and was just spent.

Tuesday came around, and I had to take my daughter, Emily, to daycare. Being in a 1 car family with my wife needing to head out of town early, I put my Emily on the bike and made the 10k trek to daycare. By the time I got to work, I knew a run was out of the question. I ended up picking my daughter up from daycare and biking home with her, but no run for the day.

Wednesday and Thursday were easy runs. I wanted to focus on recovering, so I took it fairly easily. I stuck to my normal routine and put Emily in the stroller for the trip to daycare. Thursday I was feeling a bit better, so I put in my normal 16k, but tried to keep it a bit easier.

Friday came around and I was feeling a bit fresher. I wanted to take another crack at the same tempo run the week before. I'm fixated on doing some hard running on hills right now because my STWM tune up event is the Reach the Beach Relay in New Hampshire. It's a 12 person, 200 mile relay that some of my old university team mates won last year. The course is challenging, and I have over 20 miles in legs to run, including a really hard, hilly leg in the middle of the night. I don't want to be the guy who drags the team down.
So, I set out to do the "Drive In Run" again, but planning 10k of tempo this time. I felt better heading into the run, and knew the route better, so I was confident I could handle the workout. The tempo came around and I kept myself well paced and level headed through all of it, averaging 3:38/km for the 10k, and getting in a 25k run total. I felt great after the run, and it was a real confidence boost. I thought about running on Saturday, but ended up taking it off. Better to recover.

Next week: my last 'up' week in this cycle. After that, I'll drop my mileage, and then plan for the next 3 weeks with the RTB relay in the middle of it all.

Weekly total: 4 runs, 88km

Training kicks up

In May I decided training for the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon was a good idea. I spent the next few weeks building my long run to a point where I felt comfortable kicking off marathon training.

I kicked off training the week of July 1st. I'm making this training fit into my schedule, so my week generally goes like this:

Monday - long run

Tuesday - track/workout

Wednesday - easy recovery

Thursday - longer recovery

Friday - not quite long run/workout

Saturday - off

Sunday - off

It's not an ideal schedule, but it works for me. I'm working in 4 weeks blocks, where I do 3 higher mileage weeks before coming down for a recovery week. 

The first training block went fairly well. I build my long runs up to 32k, and felt comfortable. My down week was good, with an easy 25k long run, a good longer tempo workout, and a couple of easy days.

The biggest thing I've struggled with is training paces, and what I should be doing on my long runs to get fit. So, last Monday (August 5th) I went out to do 35k. This would be my longest run in a few years, so I should probably take it fairly easily, right? Well, not really.

After 10 miles, I decided to run a tempo type of 10k, with the idea of teaching my body to run tired. So, I threw in a 37:09 10k from 16-26k. The rest of my run was fast, and felt pretty good considering it was a long, hard run. I ended up averaging 3:57/k for the run, but the last 25k were at 3:45/k. That was very encouraging, as I'm still trying to get a grasp on my fitness, but tiring.

Tuesday is track day, and the Guelph Victor's had their 3000m time trial set up. Now, I knew I should be taking it easy, but I'm a "do as I say not as I do" kinda guy, and ended up going after it in the time trail. I ended up with a solid time, but the last km was rough. We followed up the 3k with a couple of 800m repeats. I was pretty tired at the end of the day, and knew I probably shouldn't have gone that hard.

Wednesday and Thursday were easy days. Wednesday I normally run my 3 year old to her daycare in the stroller. It's about 9km to the daycare, and another km or so to work, so that was easy. Thursday was a fairly easy 16k.

Friday came, and I wanted to get in over 20k, and get some tempo in. I decided to do a hilly run with 30 minutes tempo. Bad idea. I focused too much on pace, not enough on how I felt, and was completely beat up by the run. I did a good job hitting the times, but it was far too difficult. 2 days off should help keep recovery coming, and hopefully I'll feel good for Monday's long run. 

Week total: 5 runs, 96km

Reset

So we've been pretty terrible with this blog. No updates, generic material, ect. The problem is that when we've tried to maintain the blog, we just end up posting things that feel a little forced. Yes, it's important to give new runners tips, or to help you stay cool in the summer, but it's hard to get excited to write about those things on a consistent basis. So, we need a fresh start.

How about this; I'm going to document my marathon training? There are lots of logs out there to follow training, so we'll throw in there some store and community news, product info, and other things. But the bulk of the posts over the next few months will essentially a training log.

So, on with it . . .