Week of 04/13/2008 - 04/19/2008 (Base Week 5)

Disgruntling:

A few years ago, I rescued a wall clock from a friend who was going to throw it away because it "ticked too loudly". Apparently the ticking of the second hand drove him crazy at night when he was trying to go to sleep. I don't really mind it. It's been living in my bedroom every since.

A few weeks ago, I was delighted to realize that the second ticks conveniently beat out the pattern of a 60 bpm HR. As I went to sleep I realized that my own heartbeats were just ever so slightly off-set from the ticking as to be just under 60 bpm. Since my resting HR creeps up to near 70 when I haven't been running for an extended period of time, I was happy to see that my body was slowly becoming closer to the athlete state.

On Sunday it was > 95 degrees, and distinctly uncomfortable even long past sundown... as I lay sleepless and blinking in the dark, trying not to move... I realized that my heart beats were racing egregiously faster than the clock. What the hell happened to "Spring"? Now that its basically not cold anymore, its scorching... summer training is going to be tough.

Sunday 04/13: 1:16:49, California to RB, once around the trail perimeter and back. I was really looking forward to this run, which is why it makes it all the more consterning that it somehow turned into a miserable disaster. SCIACs went horribly late on Saturday because they had to start the men's high jump at 11 pm... *shakes fist at Redlands*, ergo I did not get to bed until close to 1 am... I felt like ass when the alarm went off at 6 am to go running, and about the same at 7:30 am when I finally did get out of the house. It was a bearable temperature for about 12 minutes until I left the shade of the Arroyo...

In addition to the heat and the vague sleep deprivation headache, my quads were inexplicably sore... until it occurred to me that maybe this happened because a bunch of us were trying to do these gymnastics holds on the bars at the meet, and one of those endeavors ended with a very sharp pain in both quads. Everything just felt soooooo slow and heavy. Usually by the end of a longer run I feel itchy to pick up the pace, but not today... it kinda felt like all the gears other than "trundling" were smashed to pieces. Sucked.

To make matters worse, I typically put the bad days to rest in blissful ignorance of the distance covered... but unfortunately I do have some idea of how long this route is due to other people's gmaps. Ugly. Reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaal ugly. At least someone cleared out all of those damn weeds from the trail perimeter around the RB. Fewer allergies... good stuff.

Monday 04/14: Off. Shots. Quads feeling better today. Body still kinda feels dull. Bleh.

Tuesday 04/15: 42:45, 3 x Arroyo Tempo Loops in 14:39, 11:39, 15:04 plus jog back to car. Okay. So, back to the drawing board: I said last week that if things were still bad this week, I'd reassess, so I'm reassessing. Despite the fact that tempo loop mostly went back to normal, I'm considering this session poor for two reasons--the high HR profile on the jog laps, and the slowness of the third lap. Mostly I feel the same on all of those third laps, but the pace on the third lap is a good indicator of how taxing the tempo section was on that particular day.

Elevated resting HR, slowness of the easy days and this persistent dull feeling in my legs--I'd like to blame the heat and the sleeping poorly, but it probably also means that there's accumulated (vs. short-range, event specific) fatigue there. I think maybe for someone who's still struggling with endurance, the 50 - 65 - 75 min progression of long runs in about a month's time was not good... also going from 1 non-jogging day per week to about 3, feeling exhausted after Down Week #1.... all maybe risky choices.

Here are the changes that I will make in the next few weeks:

--This week's Thursday run will be changed from "moderate" to "easy". Saturday's fartlek will be replaced with 10 x 100m striders.
--Next week will still be Down Week #2, so long run will be scaled back to 60-65 minutes.
--For the microcycle beginning in Week 7, I will not increase the training load over this past cycle until I feel like my body is better able to recover in a sustainable manner.

I think I learned something valuable on this run though. I already had a feeling things weren't going to go well after Loop 1 was so slow and crappy feeling, so I just really tried to focus on being smooth, relaxed and efficient, keeping good form on the tempo lap. I think that really pulled me through pace-wise, vs. last week where I felt like I was just trying to fight the fatigue by expending more energy.

Wednesday 04/16: 43:15, Monterrey to bridge loop. A nice, placid run at ideal temperature (low 50's)... and thank goodness for that. Lately, the world is a conspiracy to keep me from sleeping at night--last night at 12:30 am, just after all of the local stores had closed but hours after I had gone to bed... I was awakened by an infernal beeping noise. As it turned out, my smoke detectors had chosen this moment to express their dissatisfaction with the amount of battery life remaining. Needless to say once I had managed to quell this particular problem, I felt like death when the alarm went off at 6 am, and even more like death when I finally got out to the trails at 7 am. Fortunately, I felt much improved after about 5 minutes of running.

Thursday 04/17: 52:31, California to Salvia Canyon. Glgaglhgalhgalhga... felt like basura, just like Sunday. Part of the badness can be attributed to bad L ankle... for some reason it really flared up today. Hard to walk afterwards, thank goodness tomorrow is mandatory rest.

Friday 04/18: Off. Shots. Still bad L ankle... hurts to walk, not a good sign. Tried to ice some of it away, but ended up freeze-burning some skin instead.

Saturday 04/19: 40:26, Monterrey to bridge loop. L ankle shaky but better than past few days... decided to wrap it pretty exhaustively and hope for the best. Couldn't do the strides in this state, so decided instead to do the moderate base run that I didn't do on Thursday. Felt pretty good, surprisingly. Mostly no pain during the run, and was pleased to see that I finished in the same amount of time as the Week 2 progression run. Definitely felt like a much lower effort level on this one.


Target Training this week: 4 hours 20 minutes
Actual Training: 4:15:46

Some weeks, you just don't achieve your goals...