As Cupcake would say: Re-initializing!
This week started off with sleeping... for 10 hours. And then 3 more hours. I guess I was really really really tired. I already knew my long run was going to be in the evening to give 24 hours of recovery from my hard run on Saturday, so I did not set my alarm clock for the first time in so long I can't even remember.
I had stayed up really late arguing about politics the night before, so I woke up around 11 or 12, groggily, ate some food, and then somehow fell back asleep until about 4 pm. Yikes. Anyways, the part about reinitialization has to do with the fact that when I woke up, for the first time in a few weeks, my legs actually did NOT have that half sore, half warm, dull achey feeling. I need to get more sleep.
I'm hoping for a significantly less stressful week this week, so this may be a good time to apply some much needed first aid to my training. Apparently turning the unit off and then on again is usually a good first step.
Sunday 10/19: 1:25:35, California to Stables to RB perimeter, the standard short long run. Despite feeling a little bit better after all of that sleep, I know my body is still kind of worn down, so I chose to go with a conservative shorter long run. Ran easy, legs felt a little tired but much better towards the end. Unfortunately, I did manage to run out of daylight, so the last 15 minutes through the Arroyo to my car were rather frightening. I'm really lucky to have made it through with only a few mis-steps. This was an okay run, a step in the right direction. L ankle is definitely still rickety, but felt like it was stabilizing, and my stomach finally made it through a long run without barfing up my last meal. Awesome.
Monday 10/20: Off, shots. Bleh, right arm swelled up again, not sure what they are going to do about this. But on the plus side, ate delicious pasta and baked yams at KB and Ian's.
Tuesday 10/21: 1:22:42, Bailey to connector. I don't often say things like this... but I guess not all runs can be good runs, and maybe the moral victory is finishing. Felt inordinately wiped out today. Was already breathing hard early despite the slow pace, and I was almost completely convinced that I was going to turn back at the old camp, but when I got there I convinced myself to go just a little bit further with the promise that if I started to go over threshold, I'd turn back. Took it super super easy and eventually I did get to the top in a glacial 50:12 (29:55 to camp). I can only remember one other occasion in the history of this run that it took me over 50 minutes... I think it was either one of my first ones or maybe I was sick. How horrifying... but like I said, maybe just making it to the top is the moral victory sometimes.
Wednesday 10/22: 48:08, Monterrey Recovery Loop, kind of a 'meh' run. Didn't feel catastrophically awful, for which I am grateful... but still felt kind of tired and my ankle is still bothering me, which I can tell is throwing off my stride. Everything just felt a little bit off, including my breathing, which meant that it didn't feel as restful and regenerative as an easy run ideally would.
Also, I ate a whole box of mystery taquitos from the office fridge... which my co-worker encouraged me to eat, reasoning that they were left overs from a late meeting yesterday, but then confessed at the end of the day that she was secretly thinking that it would be funny if someone sent out an e-mail about missing taquitos. Thankfully someone confirmed that they were indeed free leftovers.
Thursday 10/23: 59:40, RB perimeter to JPL gate. Feeling fairly consistently sub-par still. Not really sure what's wrong. Running just doesn't feel good. It feels forced and tired... but it seems to feel even more like that if I take a day off. Bah, humbug. Also, I need to come up with a scheme to save my department from being moved into the crappy office space... meh.
Friday 10/24: Semi-planned off day. Given how poorly training has been going lately, I figured that it might not be a good idea to add an extra day at this point in time, but then again, my neurotic predisposition to combat poor performance with more mileage was on the rise again. For better or for worse, I failed to get up at 6 am, feeling inordinately horrible... so the run was scrapped.
Saturday 10/25: 1:11:45, tried to do the same thing as last week--failed abysmally. These are the days where it just seems like, fuck this shit... why bother. Legs are feeling a little less dull and achey, average sleeptime has gone up this week, even had Friday off, there's no reason why this workout should have been substantially worse than last week's... but it was. 7:19, 7:22, 7:24, 7:34 for 4 miles in 29:39, the plan was to do 5, but things were falling apart already at 3, so it was more like barely hanging on to finish 4. 7:34 pace was formerly a moderate base run pace... so it just didn't seem worth it to grind out a 5th. The worst part is that there wasn't anything glaringly the matter--just non-specific badness. Maybe that's the theme for this week. Every run felt off, but not for any distinguishable reason.
Training this week: 5:47:50
Goals: To recover. Yep.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Week of 10/12/2008 - 10/18/2008 (Base Week 31)
Inauspicious beginnings...
The thing about beginnings... is that you don't always get to choose when they come around. Nor, do you always know what to do with them when they happen. That's the thing about beginnings.
This week contains a day that I've been waiting for for almost a whole year now. The first week where I only have to get ONE set of shots! The thing is, this isn't exactly the way it was supposed to happen. It wasn't supposed to be after my body's been completely worn down by stress and sleep deprivation, when my stomach's been revolting against digestion, when my ankle's suddenly taken a turn for the worse... because now, right NOW is when I have to focus on healing and rebuilding, not on increasing training volume. What the hell am I supposed to DO with an extra day?
After 10 months, its going to feel extraordinarily weird to have a morning without a run or a shot.
Sunday 10/12: 1:36:30, California to RB to JPL yellow gate. This was one of the worst runs of my life. I developed severe gastrointestinal distress about 20 minutes in and never recovered. It was more of a desperate trek from bathroom to bathroom, with every ounce of concentration devoted to staying upright, and not collapsing by the side of the road. I don't really remember anything about the running part. I can't believe I ran over an hour in this state... or that I continued to run after the first wave of cramps and nausea.
Monday 10/13: Off, shots. Don't remember much about this day. I think I felt poorly and was grouchy.
Tuesday 10/14: 1:21:33, Bailey to Connector. 28:46 to camp, 48:00 to sign. L ankle's been bugging me a lot, and still wasn't feeling great, but I had to seize the day and do a run I was excited about, because I knew I was losing tomorrow's run to work. Was glad I did. For some reason they didn't open the parking lot to the trail head today, so I had to climb over the fence on my way in and my way out. It turned out to be pretty nice though, because I pretty much had the whole trail to myself, save for one old lady who somehow sneaked in too. It was a really nice morning, and this run felt really inordinately easy. I was kind of disappointed with the total runtime, but I think I'm getting there. This was the most relaxed I've ever felt on this route, so much so that I was mildly disappointed that I didn't bring my HR monitor this time. The one bad thing was that I had significant pain in L ankle for the first 15 minutes or so... not sure how that is going to develop.
Wednesday 10/15: Off, work... early morning training session, partially compensated by a really delicious pumpkin bagel. L ankle still bugging me. Meh.
Thursday 10/16: 1:15:03, an excessively slow California to RB perimeter loop. Felt pretty tired and crappy today. L ankle hurt a bit less than the past few days, but it still bugged me a little. Still not getting enough sleep to recover, been feeling really worn out most days for the past few weeks. Feeling kind of barfy now after eating too much free leftovers for dinner at the office.
Friday 10/17: 45:01, Monterrey Recovery Loop. The first Friday run, maybe the only one for a while to come, but today was to make up for Wednesday. Felt pretty good today. Actually, I didn't feel that great... but this is part of the phenomena where if you're expecting "extremely crappy" and you get "kind of okay", then it feels like the best thing in the world. Picked up the pace a little bit towards the end, I think I needed to prove to myself that the fitness that I painstakingly raised from the dead over the past year is maybe just buried or dormant, instead of renewedly stone cold dead.
Saturday 10/18: 1:11:14, 4 mile sub-tempo on the track in 28:59 (7:19, 7:22, 7:14, 7:04). Spent the AM attending SCIAC multi-duals, so ran in the evening. Legs felt really bad all day... but couldn't really figure out if it was from anything that I did, or just extended sleep deprivation causing my entire being to feel really bad. Legs felt like they were already dragging on the warm up (7 laps on North field), so I decided to approach this more like a hard base run, rather than to try to hit threshold.
Given how awful I felt going in, I was pretty happy with the result. The first two miles felt really easy, so I had at that point planned on keeping that intensity and doing 5 miles, but after 9 laps my legs had other ideas. I'm still not sure what causes this, but sometimes my legs will shift gears seemingly independently of my brain... but it just felt like the pace they wanted to go, and forcing them to slow back down seemed really unnatural. Anyways, so it was 4 instead of 5 but with a really nice pick up over the last 2 miles. Felt a lot stronger than when I started out. 7 laps on the North field as a cooldown felt infinitely better than my warm up laps.
Training this week: 6:09:21, this didn't feel like a solid week, but I guess the minutes add up
Goals: Not to let this ankle thing turn into a chronic injury
The thing about beginnings... is that you don't always get to choose when they come around. Nor, do you always know what to do with them when they happen. That's the thing about beginnings.
This week contains a day that I've been waiting for for almost a whole year now. The first week where I only have to get ONE set of shots! The thing is, this isn't exactly the way it was supposed to happen. It wasn't supposed to be after my body's been completely worn down by stress and sleep deprivation, when my stomach's been revolting against digestion, when my ankle's suddenly taken a turn for the worse... because now, right NOW is when I have to focus on healing and rebuilding, not on increasing training volume. What the hell am I supposed to DO with an extra day?
After 10 months, its going to feel extraordinarily weird to have a morning without a run or a shot.
Sunday 10/12: 1:36:30, California to RB to JPL yellow gate. This was one of the worst runs of my life. I developed severe gastrointestinal distress about 20 minutes in and never recovered. It was more of a desperate trek from bathroom to bathroom, with every ounce of concentration devoted to staying upright, and not collapsing by the side of the road. I don't really remember anything about the running part. I can't believe I ran over an hour in this state... or that I continued to run after the first wave of cramps and nausea.
Monday 10/13: Off, shots. Don't remember much about this day. I think I felt poorly and was grouchy.
Tuesday 10/14: 1:21:33, Bailey to Connector. 28:46 to camp, 48:00 to sign. L ankle's been bugging me a lot, and still wasn't feeling great, but I had to seize the day and do a run I was excited about, because I knew I was losing tomorrow's run to work. Was glad I did. For some reason they didn't open the parking lot to the trail head today, so I had to climb over the fence on my way in and my way out. It turned out to be pretty nice though, because I pretty much had the whole trail to myself, save for one old lady who somehow sneaked in too. It was a really nice morning, and this run felt really inordinately easy. I was kind of disappointed with the total runtime, but I think I'm getting there. This was the most relaxed I've ever felt on this route, so much so that I was mildly disappointed that I didn't bring my HR monitor this time. The one bad thing was that I had significant pain in L ankle for the first 15 minutes or so... not sure how that is going to develop.
Wednesday 10/15: Off, work... early morning training session, partially compensated by a really delicious pumpkin bagel. L ankle still bugging me. Meh.
Thursday 10/16: 1:15:03, an excessively slow California to RB perimeter loop. Felt pretty tired and crappy today. L ankle hurt a bit less than the past few days, but it still bugged me a little. Still not getting enough sleep to recover, been feeling really worn out most days for the past few weeks. Feeling kind of barfy now after eating too much free leftovers for dinner at the office.
Friday 10/17: 45:01, Monterrey Recovery Loop. The first Friday run, maybe the only one for a while to come, but today was to make up for Wednesday. Felt pretty good today. Actually, I didn't feel that great... but this is part of the phenomena where if you're expecting "extremely crappy" and you get "kind of okay", then it feels like the best thing in the world. Picked up the pace a little bit towards the end, I think I needed to prove to myself that the fitness that I painstakingly raised from the dead over the past year is maybe just buried or dormant, instead of renewedly stone cold dead.
Saturday 10/18: 1:11:14, 4 mile sub-tempo on the track in 28:59 (7:19, 7:22, 7:14, 7:04). Spent the AM attending SCIAC multi-duals, so ran in the evening. Legs felt really bad all day... but couldn't really figure out if it was from anything that I did, or just extended sleep deprivation causing my entire being to feel really bad. Legs felt like they were already dragging on the warm up (7 laps on North field), so I decided to approach this more like a hard base run, rather than to try to hit threshold.
Given how awful I felt going in, I was pretty happy with the result. The first two miles felt really easy, so I had at that point planned on keeping that intensity and doing 5 miles, but after 9 laps my legs had other ideas. I'm still not sure what causes this, but sometimes my legs will shift gears seemingly independently of my brain... but it just felt like the pace they wanted to go, and forcing them to slow back down seemed really unnatural. Anyways, so it was 4 instead of 5 but with a really nice pick up over the last 2 miles. Felt a lot stronger than when I started out. 7 laps on the North field as a cooldown felt infinitely better than my warm up laps.
Training this week: 6:09:21, this didn't feel like a solid week, but I guess the minutes add up
Goals: Not to let this ankle thing turn into a chronic injury
Monday, October 6, 2008
Week of 10/05/2008 - 10/11/2008 (Base Week 30)
Does it really get better?
..and actually, for once I'm not talking about my abysmal state of fitness... I'm talking about life, and how getting up at 4 am (3 am CA time) to catch my flight actually didn't feel so different from my normal state of sleep deprivation these days.
You think well if I just survive this week, or this due date... but then, something else inevitably pops on up. Before you know, years have gone by... and you're still disgruntled about the same things. For those of us whose interests don't align with gainful employment... well, kinda makes one feel pretty bummed out sometimes.
Sunday 10/05: 1:34:04, 2 x 2 laps of Washington Park. I guess it doesn't quite serve the purpose of a long run with the bathroom break in between, but I've been suffering from gastrointestinal distress ever since the Chinese food on Friday night. For some reason today was the worst of it... ran 2 laps very slowly while accumulating a worsening stomach ache, then had to shuttle back to the house to go to the bathroom, then headed out for 2 more. The third lap felt absolutely like death, and I considered bailing on the last one, but then I realized that I felt crappy because of my stomach, and not because of my running system... so I decided to man up and power through. Glad that I did, because I finally started feeling better on the last lap. Wasn't really keeping precise track of time, but the two halves were about equal at ~47 minutes per 2 laps plus jog back to house and back... lap splits were around 23, 22, 23:30, 21:30, basically correlated to how bad my stomach ache was at the time. Felt like 10 minute miles at the time, but I felt much better about this run after mapping the route, probably ~10.9 miles including commuting back and forth from the house.
Monday 10/06: Off, traveling. Another crappy day. Had some sort of massive allergic reaction this morning, and was sneezing uncontrollably until evening. They wouldn't even give me my shots today on account of the fact that my brains seemed to be coming out of my nose. Felt better after I got home to my myriad nasal sprays. Need sleep. Dying.
Tuesday 10/07: 50:43, Monterrey recovery loop, ridiculously, insanely slowly. When I woke up I still felt horrible, despite getting 8 hours of sleep for the first time in weeks. Typically my legs are wiped out after running at altitude, and I guess they were particularly so. I guess one could say that it's an improvement that my brains are no longer coming out of my nose at quite the same rate, but unfortunately this was replaced by my nose being insanely chapped from yesterday, and it hurting like hell when it started running again on the run. Basically it was pretty miserable on all accounts.
Wednesday 10/08: Off, the first complete casualty of this godawful few weeks... After working until 1 am, I woke up and it was almost 7 am... so I got out of bed, but I felt so insanely horrible that I just fell back asleep until 8:30, effectively putting a nail in the coffin of me running today. This means that after teetering on the edge for weeks now, I've finally passed the threshold where any subsequent sleep deprivation will exponentially cause a decline in one's health and well-being. Craptastic.
Thursday 10/09: 1:11:08, California around RB and back. Down but not out. Unfortunately, that dull, achey, its horrible to be alive feeling was still present when I woke up today, but I'm renewedly determined not to fall completely off of the ball. This wasn't a strong run by any means, but it was decent. Felt okay, wasn't ridiculously slow, felt better towards the end. I just have to keep doing these base runs to prevent fitness loss while I try to ride out the rest of this horribleness. Things are slated to be mildly better next week, and calm down moderately after that.
Friday 10/10: Off, shots, stress, work, the usual. Had a good talk with el boss man though, and Peter came and we ate delicious mini burgers... so I'm starting to feel a little bit better about life.
Saturday 10/11: 1:19:48, 3 x Arroyo Tempo Loops with the Caltech guys team... man was that ugly... but nevertheless, a good workout, or at least it was maybe good to run outside the comfort zone, since I don't do that very often these days. Started out with the second group on the first lap, but then was unceremoniously left behind. Oh, well. After everyone disappeared, I just ran a pace that felt manageable. 11:09, 11:33, 11:41, for unfortunate positive splits, but I was glad that the last two laps didn't fall apart horrendously. Didn't feel wiped out or anything, but the breathing was hard. I'm getting there, would ideally like to be able to comfortably crank out three at about 11 minutes, but you know... this is a lot of progress compared to before. Ran from the gym to the Arroyo too, and the longer warm up and cool down felt really good.
Training this week: 4:55:43, eh... for 4 days, I'll take it.
Goals: Not to die, Part the second (well, I'm still kicking so...)
..and actually, for once I'm not talking about my abysmal state of fitness... I'm talking about life, and how getting up at 4 am (3 am CA time) to catch my flight actually didn't feel so different from my normal state of sleep deprivation these days.
You think well if I just survive this week, or this due date... but then, something else inevitably pops on up. Before you know, years have gone by... and you're still disgruntled about the same things. For those of us whose interests don't align with gainful employment... well, kinda makes one feel pretty bummed out sometimes.
Sunday 10/05: 1:34:04, 2 x 2 laps of Washington Park. I guess it doesn't quite serve the purpose of a long run with the bathroom break in between, but I've been suffering from gastrointestinal distress ever since the Chinese food on Friday night. For some reason today was the worst of it... ran 2 laps very slowly while accumulating a worsening stomach ache, then had to shuttle back to the house to go to the bathroom, then headed out for 2 more. The third lap felt absolutely like death, and I considered bailing on the last one, but then I realized that I felt crappy because of my stomach, and not because of my running system... so I decided to man up and power through. Glad that I did, because I finally started feeling better on the last lap. Wasn't really keeping precise track of time, but the two halves were about equal at ~47 minutes per 2 laps plus jog back to house and back... lap splits were around 23, 22, 23:30, 21:30, basically correlated to how bad my stomach ache was at the time. Felt like 10 minute miles at the time, but I felt much better about this run after mapping the route, probably ~10.9 miles including commuting back and forth from the house.
Monday 10/06: Off, traveling. Another crappy day. Had some sort of massive allergic reaction this morning, and was sneezing uncontrollably until evening. They wouldn't even give me my shots today on account of the fact that my brains seemed to be coming out of my nose. Felt better after I got home to my myriad nasal sprays. Need sleep. Dying.
Tuesday 10/07: 50:43, Monterrey recovery loop, ridiculously, insanely slowly. When I woke up I still felt horrible, despite getting 8 hours of sleep for the first time in weeks. Typically my legs are wiped out after running at altitude, and I guess they were particularly so. I guess one could say that it's an improvement that my brains are no longer coming out of my nose at quite the same rate, but unfortunately this was replaced by my nose being insanely chapped from yesterday, and it hurting like hell when it started running again on the run. Basically it was pretty miserable on all accounts.
Wednesday 10/08: Off, the first complete casualty of this godawful few weeks... After working until 1 am, I woke up and it was almost 7 am... so I got out of bed, but I felt so insanely horrible that I just fell back asleep until 8:30, effectively putting a nail in the coffin of me running today. This means that after teetering on the edge for weeks now, I've finally passed the threshold where any subsequent sleep deprivation will exponentially cause a decline in one's health and well-being. Craptastic.
Thursday 10/09: 1:11:08, California around RB and back. Down but not out. Unfortunately, that dull, achey, its horrible to be alive feeling was still present when I woke up today, but I'm renewedly determined not to fall completely off of the ball. This wasn't a strong run by any means, but it was decent. Felt okay, wasn't ridiculously slow, felt better towards the end. I just have to keep doing these base runs to prevent fitness loss while I try to ride out the rest of this horribleness. Things are slated to be mildly better next week, and calm down moderately after that.
Friday 10/10: Off, shots, stress, work, the usual. Had a good talk with el boss man though, and Peter came and we ate delicious mini burgers... so I'm starting to feel a little bit better about life.
Saturday 10/11: 1:19:48, 3 x Arroyo Tempo Loops with the Caltech guys team... man was that ugly... but nevertheless, a good workout, or at least it was maybe good to run outside the comfort zone, since I don't do that very often these days. Started out with the second group on the first lap, but then was unceremoniously left behind. Oh, well. After everyone disappeared, I just ran a pace that felt manageable. 11:09, 11:33, 11:41, for unfortunate positive splits, but I was glad that the last two laps didn't fall apart horrendously. Didn't feel wiped out or anything, but the breathing was hard. I'm getting there, would ideally like to be able to comfortably crank out three at about 11 minutes, but you know... this is a lot of progress compared to before. Ran from the gym to the Arroyo too, and the longer warm up and cool down felt really good.
Training this week: 4:55:43, eh... for 4 days, I'll take it.
Goals: Not to die, Part the second (well, I'm still kicking so...)
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