Sunday, October 19, 2008

Week of 10/19/2008 - 10/25/2008 (Base Week 32)

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.

2 comments:

Ryan said...

good to hear about the taquitos.

i want some taquitos.

Ian said...

Aaaaaah, update update update!

I know you've been running because I saw you at the arroyo a few times. And yes, I'm willing admit that I check your log to see if you make mention of it.