Is it time to leave the nest?
I'm coming off of my highest week of training minutes, and I'm actually pretty close to 5 hours, which is 50 minutes per day with one off day. That's a decent training week. I admit, however, that it was kind of a shock when a certain someone (my beloved training consultant) told me that at this point, I'm a few months in and its not good to get stuck in the rut of running only easy all of the time. Meh? it isn't???
This is kind of the equivalent of when you pull the wheel chair out from under the patient who's gotten used to not having to have to walk, shoving some crutches under their nose and tell them its time to start physical therapy. Its... actually pretty comfortable in that wheel chair. I realized that I've kind of retreated back into this mindset, with no pressure and no expectations. I run at the same pleasant level of exertion every day, thinking that there's all the time in the world to run faster... Every day is pleasantly mindless, I run about the same amount of time, about the same speed, and mostly cheerfully if somewhat impatiently track my slow progress back towards presentability.
I so completely had to repress my instincts of better, faster, more to make it through this injury and starting running again without destroying my body, that it actually, really came as shock to me that maybe its time to toddle a few more steps forward. That my responsibilities to my training extend beyond trundling through my jogs and core strengthenings. I actually have enough weekly minutes now to organize a "long(er)" run, a shorter uptempo run, and some recovery runs, so that my week has some structure and variety. I have to admit that the return of training elements kind of makes me feel more stressed than before, and that apprehension is not entirely welcome... but if I'm ever to race again, I'm going to have to wake the competitive instinctive out of its extended hibernation.
Sunday 01/13: Off. Playing hooky today to go snow shoeing with Peter! Drove up the Angeles Crest past Newcombs Ranch to the Mt. Waterman trail. Followed the packed snow path for a bit, then embarked on an off roading adventure with the snow shoes. Parts of it very steep and strenuous, but there was also some pleasant rolling parts. Almost fell into a snow covered stream, which was really, incredibly frightening ... every Peter production is a curious mix of super fun and super harrowingly scary.
Monday 01/14: A bad day at work. Ankles and heels (where the achilles feeds in and also where the plantar fascia tendon attaches) feel inflamed from the steep uphill snow shoeing. Decided to give the system an extra day to heal (no pun intended). Core strengthening at the gym with Peter. My proficiency on this front seems to be back on the improving track again after the layoff over break.
Tuesday 01/15: 44:30, Monterrey to bridge... really, really freaking slowly. Felt not great in the morning, but not completely wiped out. However, run was 2 minutes slower than usual, wtf? I am displeased. R hip and foot feeling crappy afterwards, and I was sneezing almost constantly throughout the day. Weird and uncomfortable and crappy. More stress at work, and I'm slowly, dying from the 3 week gap in insurance coverage of Zyrtec, and commercial release of the over the counter version. Glahgahgalghghg. As a result, I've been feeling respiratorily crappy for the past week or so, but its never clear if its from allergies or from having contracted the plague. Grouchy today.
Wednesday 01/16: 42:01, 3 x Arroyo Tempo loops (14:17, 12:19, 14:08) plus jog back to car. I'm learning some Spanish words from work. The word for how I feel today is: Basura. Woke up feeling totally exhausted, did not make it out to the Arroyo at 7:30 as planned... which was fortunate bc that allowed me to be woken up again at 8:15 by a frantic call from El Boss Man. At this point, I decided to crawl out of bed, empty the sinuses and head out for a run, because it does NOT sound like I will be going home early tonight to run. Felt pretty asleep and crappy. Nasal and upper respiratory passages still swollen and stuffy from yesterday's mystery sneezing episode.
Today was supposed to be my first "long run" of 10K (4 arroyo tempo loops with the middle 2 at running effort instead of jogging effort) but I realized that I didn't have time and I also felt inordinately crappy, so instead I just did 3 loops. Took the HR monitor out, mostly to see if I could determine if I was getting sick (higher resting rate) but it looks like a negative on that one--so its just the allergies (kind of scary)... relief comes on 1/24, only 8 days away. HR monitor was freaking out in the Arroyo for most of the time, so didn't get a ton of readings. I did the first and last loops at the same effort level as all of my other runs (which Mark calls "perma-trodding") about 155-165 bpm, then for the middle loop, I pushed the pace up to the maximum sustainable level without breathing out of my mouth, which was about mid 180's. Felt so, so fantastic to run with a "running" stride instead of the "jogging" stride, but only thing that didn't really gel was the breathing part... throat just felt really tight and swollen like forcing air through a coffee stirrer.
Thursday 01/17: 43:33, ran out of time in the AM, so Monterrey to bridge loop again. Slowly, again. Still feeling pretty crappy. wtf is up with this week? R heel and L foot is feeling crappy as well. Arghhh.... sucks.
Friday 01/18: 40:45, one perimeter lap around the RB in the AM. Disaster strikes... along with the highly consterning realization that I need to make better decisions for myself. Had a full scale asthma attach halfway through this run, felt dizzy and vomitous, but was 20 minutes away from car in either direction, so had to gut it out. Don't recall a worse run in the past year or so. The rest of this run felt very much like the end of track 2006, where muscularly you feel great, but its like having cotton stuffed down your nose all the way into your lungs...
Went to buy the highly expensive antihistamine pills immediately after the run. I just don't think I can make it these last 7 days like this... In hindsight, I should really have just shelled out the money for all 3 weeks of the insurance gap, because I'm really not okay without them. Maybe I would have been okay if I wasn't trying to train... but like I was feeling really great after I got back from vacation, like I thought I had turned a corner with my training, but I've watched it crumble in the past few weeks and feel frustration at myself for not being able to recognize that a one time expenditure of $65 is probably still less than the price of happiness that I would have derived from 3 solid weeks of training. At any rate, what's done is done... I'm hoping my body will slowly go back to normal within the next few weeks and I can graduate from "Pre-Base" in a healthy and happy state.
Saturday 01/19: 45:00, treadmill at the hotel in Denver. Apartment hunting with Peter this weekend. Lots of snow, freezing temperatures (literally) and pavement, not a lot of time either, so treadmill in the gym it is. For what its worth, this was the most technologically advanced treadmill I've ever seen, with a big color screen that I eventually figured out could be turned into a TV. Never figured out how to un-mute it though, so not terribly entertaining.
To pass the time, I tried testing the effect of various speeds and footstrikes on HR. Maybe not a great sample size since everything was confined to "slow"... but found that running with a "running" stride instead of the shuffling jog stride is actually more "efficient" on a speed per HR basis. Also, thinking about something stressful raises HR by ~5 bpm at any given speed. Did ~20 minutes at 145-155 bpm, then 15 minutes in the 160 range, then the last bit at 170 with some jogging at the end. Breathing easy (effect of altitude probably canceled out by effect of having taken 2 zyrtec since yesterday's disaster), but felt pretty crappy otherwise. Legs felt pretty heavy, feet hurt above averagely.
Target training this week: 4 hours?
Actual training: 3:35:49
Ambitious on 5 days... but I want to *try* a longer run this week, playing it by ear for now.
**Later revision: yeah, not gonna happen this week. Try again later.
4 comments:
how is it "playing hooky" if it's on a sunday?
all occurences of not running on a day that wasn't supposed to be a day off is called "playing hooky"
i was confused also - playing hooky usually means your skipping work to do something fun, not skipping running, which is supposed to be fun anyway.
in the ideal physical state, i would be able to do BOTH running and snow shoeing in one day and not be hospitalized... however, i'm still lacking in endurance and my feet don't really support a lot of movement in one day, so sometimes i have to choose between activities. not that i'm training for anything in particular, but there's still residual guilt for foregoing a running day, for whatever reason.
Post a Comment