Week of 06/22/2008 - 06/28/2008 (Base Week 15)

Reflections...

On Saturday I felt something that I'd been painstakingly staving off for a good few months now.

I set my alarm for 6 am, woke up at 8 am and found that it was already 90 degrees out. I stumbled, still exhausted and bleary feeling out of bed and the only thought in my head was how much I did not want to run. It wasn't just occasional morning inertia, and it wasn't entirely about the heat, this was big picture training angst and by now I know exactly what the symptoms look like.

For the past few months, I've been getting through it, trying to encourage myself with the small unsatisfying improvements, trying to keep talking positive even though deep down I knew it was a sham. Nobody told me it was going to be so damn hard. It's hard to train when you don't trust your own body, it's harder to train without hope. Between foot tendonitis that flares somewhat unpredictably, weird asthma symptoms, shots twice a week and a lot of still unexplained fatigue and insomnia, training's just not what it used to be. I didn't realize that sometimes you can't keep expecting a breakthrough around the next corner because then you may be disappointed indefinitely. I felt like I would have to dig deep to get through this, and slogging through another sub-par run in the suffocating heat was not going to give me the inspiration that I so desperately needed.

So, I dusted off my beautiful Bianchi and headed off into the summer dusk, to ride until I found what I was looking for. There were all sorts of folks out there at the RB on that unlikely hot evening. A big football looking guy who bravely made it through about 3 laps at a good pace, but clearly struggling towards the end... a girl who roller-bladed alongside her runner boyfriend, a lean, athletic looking guy doing striders, technical work and a strange stint of backwards running, a happy old couple. I wondered at what each of their stories were...

In the end, a whole lot of thinking lead a whole lot of nowhere, but that's alright I suppose. At about 8 pm I ran out of water and daylight simultaneously and so it was time to go home. So home I went and felt content. It was a nice ride on a nice summer evening, and then I realized... you've got to WANT to run. Deep down inside, you've got to want to do each day of training. When it gets about just getting through what's on the training plan, thats when it gets to be no good. I think I've needed an extra day off for a while now, and now that I've taken it, I felt again that I wanted to run.


Sunday 06/22: 1:24:30, JPL adventure run. Longest long run yet. Instead of going to the waterfall, I went the way the signs pointed to Switzer/Brown Mtn. Unfortunately, I didn't have a whole lot of minutes left on the clock in which to explore, but found a nice extended scramble up a steep Bailey-esque narrow trail, that descended into a completely differently vegetated valley. Turned back at the next river crossing but really wanted to know how this linked up to all of these other trails. Was really nice, woke up 1 hour too late at 6 am, but it was unnaturally cooler in the forest and the temperature was just fine.

Took a short nap upon my return and went to hang out with John and Chris, who unfortunately confirmed my suspicion that the majority of the vegetation along that JPL trail was in fact poison oak. Gah, felt like my legs were itchy all day after that. We saw Get Smart, ate Pinkberry and discovered some cool new trails at the end of Lake Ave. Got in workout #2 of the day which involved running up as many giant dirt stairs as possible to get to the top of the mountain before we ran out of daylight. Didn't quite get to see what was at the top, but it was fantastic anyways. Kind of scary coming back down, but we made it!

Monday 06/23: Off. Shots. A really crummy day. Both of my arms swelled up alarmingly after my shots today. No idea why, things have been quiet on the shots end for a while now. There's too much work, and the reason I dislike delegating is that most of the time it doesn't get done the way I want it. Fortunately, I think I still have enough happy left from the weekend to avoid becoming completely irate.

Tuesday 06/24: 44:48, Monterrey to Bridge loop. Legs still a bit tight from Sunday's adventures, so I figured I'd give it an extra day before the tempo. From the slow pace, I'm going to guess it was the right decision. Still really struggling with insomnia during the night and inability to get up in the morning. It wasn't as hot as it's been, but generally the runs on the days I can't get up early enough just don't feel as good. Also bad--my arms are STILL swollen and sore from the damn reaction to the shots yesterday....

Wednesday 06/25: 54:48, warm up, 3 mile steady state, cool down. Especially bad today on waking up.... dragged my lazy ass out of bed a full 90 minutes after I was supposed to, and as a consequence was BOTH uncomfortably warm AND late for work... I had had a good feeling about this workout, but it turned out to be a complete disappointment. 21:31 for 3 miles (7:04, 7:14, 7:13) The worst part is that after the first mile, I felt like I had made a breakthrough, but then after 1.5 miles it quickly became apparent that the same pace was not going to be manageable at this "tempo" amount of effort. I would have been happy with 7:05's... 10 seconds per mile is noticeable improvement, but as it is, this is tantamount to NO improvement. I also felt renewed disgruntlement at the fact that I felt so much more left in my legs but that they are chained to this piece of crap cardiovascular system... which is why I seem to be permanently doomed to be running 7:15's.

Thursday 06/26: 42:32, Huntington/Virginia, started real easy, gradually sped up. My weekly 1 pavement run. On the bright side, I think my feet are kinda getting used to it... though on second thought almost half of this run is actually grass. Oh, well. Did ~half an hour worth of a medley of technical stuff afterwards at the track, high knees, butt kicks, striders and 2 x 200m accelerations. I think I've got a lot of disgruntled energy... bc I normally do not feel enthused to do striders, but today I felt like doing lots of them. Unfortunately also got exposed to a lot of freshly cut grass... so now my throat is raw, been coughing all day and breathing shallow. Damn piece of crap respiratory system/allergies.

Friday 06/27: Off. Shots. Meetings. They cut my dose on the shots bc of Monday's disaster, which is nice bc it didn't swell at all... but not nice in that it prolongs the number of weeks before I can get them just ONCE a week. I also have this hunch that my current work ratio of 25% analysis : 75% difficult person management is here to stay...

Saturday 06/28: 2:05:42, Epic Brown Mountain Half Marathon Adventure, ~1800 ft elevation gain. Ummm, what can I say... Ooops? If there was a sign on my forehead that displayed "X days since last poor training decision", X = 0 as of today. For what it's worth, it was glorious.

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2030086

Let's just pretend that I mapped the return route, which is the same way that I came. Went the same way as the Millard Camp Ground route, except instead of descending to the campground, I took the left fork at the intersection to climb a little bit more up to the end of Brown Mountain Upper Mountainway. There were these beautiful narrow trails at the end of the fire road at the top... but since I had already grossly over-extended my "non foot aggravating running minutes" bank account, I had to squelch my curiosity and turn back.

As it turns out, it was kind of a long way home. I also made an unplanned detour and ended up at somebody's farm, which mapped conveniently to 0.8 miles, for a grand total of 13.1 miles. Felt good the whole way climbing up, the descending got old pretty quick, but all in all didn't feel like 2 hours, was definitely ready to be done by the time I got to my car, but it didn't feel like I was going to die or anything. I guess since I'm used to the Mt. Wilson trails, the fireroad felt friendly and not steep.


Training this week: 5:52:20... holy shit.
Goals: To not be driven crazy by work.