I'm going cold turkey on the junk food.
Last week, the following items arrived at the office:
3 Gift Baskets, Godiva Chocolate
1 See's Candy Assortment
1 Christmas tin, popcorn and brownies
2 cubic feet of Mrs. Field's baked goods
1 frosted sheet cake
5 pounds and 5 stomach aches later, I've decided that developing adult onset diabetes is NOT the way to go for running fast. Complex carbs... I need complex carbs....
Sunday 12/17: 14 miles, 2:05:05 easy with Ian. Torrential downpour has cleared to a marvelous day. Ankle felt pretty strong despite the uneven ground. Stomach hurt on and off, felt a little bit like the inadequately oiled Tin Man, the slightest bit more exertion than usual to un-stick those joints. Sure is nice to crack the 2 hour mark though. Its been a whole lot of weeks since I've had an old school Lydiard style capillary growth stimulating long run.
Monday 12/18: 10.5 miles, 23 minutes of warm up, 10K tempo on the track (42:02.31), 21 minutes of cool down, jogging on the infield. Strangest run ever... alternately horrible and wonderful. Pissed off about the 2.31 seconds, but this actually is a new 10K PR.
It all started because of the darkness. Holiday hours apparently end at 7:30 pm, so that's when the lights went off at the track, and I had to run the entire workout in darkness. This made it extremely difficult to see my splits (press button to take split, then press "illuminate" button, then squint uncomfortably to see the tiny radioactive green numbers...) so after a mile or so, the pursuit was generally abandoned and I just tried to focus on relaxing and running on feel.
I was planning to do the default monday workout of 3 x 2 miles @ AT pace, but somehow I found a really great rhythm on the 8th lap, and so I just ran all the way through. I had only a vague idea of what was going on time-wise, so when I walked under the lamp to see my final time, I let out an involuntary "AAAAAAGHHHHHH!!!" Minutes and seconds are an arbitrary time unit in the end, but 2.31 seconds, how cruel. For some reason I've gotten the notion stuck in my head that the ability to do this workout in sub-42 at this point will equate to a sub-40 race in May, which is the irrational source of consternation over these 2.31 seconds.
I retrieved my mile splits out of my watch as soon as I got home: 6:58.35, 6:55.26, 6:45.81, 6:39.59, 6:34.12, 6:36.63, 1:32.55 (the 5K's come out to about 21:17, 20:45) I remember feeling really choppy and bad in those first 2 miles, but I didn't realize how slow they really were. Then it all cleared up mysteriously and those last 4 miles were possibly the best flat 4 miles I've ever run in my life. They just felt so fluid and smooth and easy like flying, I felt like I could just run that way forever and ever. It felt so, so, great I almost thought about running some more miles just to see how long it would last. I closed easily in 92 seconds, which in many cases would constitute the fastest lap I run in a 5K race. Interesting...
Tuesday 12/19: 6.2 miles, 53:53 easy jog Huntington up Oak Knoll. Felt great, except L achilles hurt on and off at the base of the heel... I know this is because my heel is maybe 1/4 inch lower in my shoe without the orthotic, but hoping it will eventually adjust with some stretching and icing.
Ugh, death by holidays! Two more chocolate baskets, one box of gourmet brownies and a pound cake arrived today. Apparently the etymology of a pound cake is because there's 1 lb of butter in it (!!!)
Wednesday 12/20: off. All day conference (got laughed at for use of word "ergo" during team building exercise...), got back late, achilles is still sore. Stretch, ice, bed.
Thursday 12/21: 7 miles, Bailey Canyon to Wilson Connector in the Frees again. 28:08 to camp, 46:04 to sign, 1:18:51 total. Mildly consterned. A little bit of soreness in L ankle/arch made it hard to get good leverage for the uphill, but that doesn't entirely explain the sub-par showing. Achilles soreness mostly gone though.
Regrettably, I'm also FAT. Put on a few extra pounds of holiday cheer in the past few weeks. Felt okay for the tempo, but clearly the extra weight is an accentuated liability on a hill climb.
Friday 12/22: 5.2 miles, 43:45 easy recovery jogging. Orange Grove at night again, legs felt great, but just couldn't find the right footstrike for my left side, shooting pains are gone, but ankle and arch are still sore. Its worse when it's cold...
Felt really impatient today. Legs and lungs are feeling good for the first time since being sick, but I still can't really test my body because my freaking left foot just won't heal (quickly enough). I'm still favoring the left side a lot of the time, which essentially means I don't push off of the left foot at full strength. It's been over 2 months now since I did my last long tempo run, and I'm dying to see where I am...
Saturday 12/23: 7.4 miles, 59:41 quasi-progression run through Upper Arroyo. Didn't eat anything all day before the run, thinking that may have been a bad idea. Legs felt strong, but everything else just didn't gel, like when your front shifter gets stuck in the little gear. Was supposed to be 3 miles easy, 2.5 miles base pace, 2 miles tempo pace... but the slow overall time makes me suspect it was more like 6 miles of easy pace followed by 1.5 miles of tempo pace. Oh, well.
Target Mileage: 50 miles
Week Actual: 50.3 miles
Last week: 39.6 miles
Woo hoo! I actually met my target mileage this week, how 'bout that.
4 comments:
You do like that Lydiard guy, don't you? Be sure not to let any stops you make last more than 12 seconds! Otherwise your blood pressure will drop and you'll ruin everything... hahahaha Arthur Lydiard, what a funny guy.
I comment way too much, but it's not like I have anything else to do over break.
Anyway, about your Monday workout. Remember what I said about taking away the watch and using sheer effort as a gauge for how intense your runs should be? I think this is a good example of taking away that feedback and running on feeling, then looking back later on to evaluate how you run. I think we should investigate that more. It'd probably make us better runners.
You should watch out for that achilles. Seriously, if it's at where the achilles inserts into the heel bone, then that's what I've had. It can cause a lot of problems. Don't let it get to the point where it hurts when you first take a few steps out of bed... if it persists for another day or two, you should probably just take a few days off and XT. It's definitely better than taking a few months off...
I'm just getting tired of being injured and not running. Cross training for the purpose of staying in shape until I'm completely healed seems so psychologically difficult. I can only do it so long. I guess I just need to last one more week. One week and the doctor should tell me what's wrong with me. Then hopefully we'll figure out what the next steps are.
In either case, watch that achilles. I'm not convinced that doing that hill run was such a great thing, but alright. As long as it's all good.
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