Argh! So, as it turns out, my down week wasn't very restful at all... but onwards we go.
I'm feeling a little bit of everything this week. I'm cautiously optimistic, a little frustrated, a lot stircrazy. Just have to remember to make good decisions for my above averagely fragile feet.
FYI, after much investigation, I have deemed Rite Aid brand foot wrap to be the best, over ACE, Johnson & Johnson, and Walgreens brand. The key is that it is supportive with the right degree of give, and its also very thin, which means that it doesn't change the way my foot settles into the shoe.
Sunday 04/06: 1:18:04, Out and back along a little river in Colorado with Peter (on bike). Mostly it was this hard packed driveable dirt road which was a lot more impact than the squishy trails that I'm used to, but it was okay after some getting used to. Between the altitude, and the skiing, I felt really sore and beat for the first 30 minutes, but it gradually worked itself out. Felt pretty good after 30 minutes, so kept on going a bit ambitiously for about 40, then turned back. A lot faster and smoother on the way back. Picked it up a little bit at the end, but finished feeling loads better than when I started.
Longest run yet. Feet have actually held up remarkably well through the ski boots and the long run. Felt really encouraged by the fact that 78 minutes didn't feel bad at all. It's possible that's because I was going like 12 minute miles... but I guess I'll never know. Surprised to feel sore and tired through the hips and quads from skiing. Long run helped work out some of that, but still don't feel fantastic.
Monday 04/07: Off. Shots, traveling. Got up at 3 am CA time to get on plane back home. Took Metro to work straight from the airport. Didn't feel as terrible as expected, but was tough.
Tuesday 04/08: 43:24, 3 x Arroyo Tempo Loops in 14:52, 12:03, 15:07 plus jog back to car. *BIG SIGH*... well fuck then, we're back to square one. Aaaarrrghhhh... I was mostly expecting this disaster, but it's still not a good feeling. I vaguely considered re-shuffling this week to give myself an extra day before Tempo Day, but in the morning I talked myself into the fact that I could somehow will myself to do well today despite some counter-indications.
Maybe it's that my body did not enjoy being awake for 20 hours yesterday, or that my legs are still trashed from my adventures in Colorado, I'm not quite sure... but HR was high and erratic this morning, and then it was unusually low on the uptempo lap, but I just didn't feel like I could pick it up, which is also unusual. Will would say that's classic indications for being tired, which may be true. I knew I was in trouble bc the first jog lap was so slow, so I already started telling myself, its about the effort level, the training value is about the effort level... in a month it will only matter that I ran this lap at a HR of 185, and not that the lap was not accomplished in an acceptable amount of minutes and seconds. I'm so far away from my next date of competition, that it doesn't matter, I just have to get through the bad days...
I'm really trying to make running a more positive thing in my life this time around, so I mostly reasoned myself out of a sour mood by mid-day. The week will go on, I will try to get sleep and keep it together, and if NEXT week is still similarly bad, then I'll have to think about whether I need to make an adjustment to my training.
Wednesday 04/09: 44:27, Monterrey to bridge loop. Didn't particularly feel bad, but reallllllly slow. Crap, maybe two bad days in a row doesn't constitute a trend, but it bugs me because I can't figure out where I went wrong. What's really upsetting is that I feel like the skiing and the slightly-longer-than-supposed-to-long run are like things that are just part of the variation of life... and its really discouraging to realize that one's body is so fragile as to not be able to accommodate such things. I don't know if this is a ME thing, or if this is a generalized "not used to daily exertion" thing.
Thursday 04/10: 48:26, California to Salvia Canyon. Finally, a good run! Broke out a new pair of shoes and socks, both were excellent. Felt good, so ran a bit harder than usual, legs felt ready for a whole lot more, but decided to restrain myself due to intensive ingraining of low HR training philosophy... Faster than last week, and I didn't even cut off that extra loop on the other side of the bridge this time. Was really, really tempted to gmaps this route to figure out the actual pace... but I have resisted.
Friday 04/11: Off. Shots. Baked cookies for the brats tomorrow.
Saturday 04/12: 39:52, Jogged from Monterrey to first bridge, then 8 x 1 minute pick ups, then jogged the remainder back to car. Kind of a mixed bag on this one... the original plan (per suggestion of The Brain) was to jog 10 minutes, then do 10 x 1 on, 1 off, then jog 10 minutes = 40 minutes which is about the length of the route. The fatal flaw turned out to be that the 1 off was just untenable to be recovered in time for the next segment, so it kinda degenerated into 60-80 second pick ups on 3 minute cycles.
After about 6, I started feeling that soreness between the first 3 extensor tendons on the bad foot... so I decided to cut it at 8 and leave myself 6 minutes of cooldown instead of 2. The last one was almost 2 minutes at high intensity, felt it in my legs for the first time in about a year.
Body definitely freaked out by even short excursions into above-threshold territory--that was not a surprise to me, but I also realized that I may not be as badly off as it feels, if that makes any sense. There were a lot of strollers out in the Arroyo today, so a greeting generally had to be dispensed during each of the pick ups. Every time I opened my mouth to say something I realized that I actually had a lot more breath to spare than it felt like...
Really had a lot of trouble finding the right pace and effort level. Mainly focused on having high turnover and good form, the point of this exercise being to move my legs at a racing gait instead of a trundling gait. From a bodily perspective it wasn't bad, felt good about the range of higher paces, even though most of them didn't feel like they would be supported by my current cardiovascular capacity... if you kinda tuned out the "hard to breathe" part, I felt like I was relaxed, smooth and that legs shifted pretty easily to higher gears. Felt really good afterwards, like I could go on another run.
Target Training this week: 4 hours 15 minutes
Actual Training: 4:14:13
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