Week 26 in Review

Week 26 started strong but by the end of the week I was feeling fatigued again...  not necessarily in a bad way but I just got to watch it.  I'm thinking week 27 might be a stepdown week for recovery.

Ended the week with 50.54 miles and a total of 202.51 miles for the month... quickly approaching the halfway mark on the year.  I'm very pleased with my training so far this year, hitting new milestones for training volume just about every month.  

Summer heat is definitely here.  Sunday's long run was brutal.  14.14 miles at 8:10 pace (1:55:42 total duration).  I was sweating so hard my shoes were squishing and my running shorts were soaking wet.  I don't really remember ever sweating so much during one run before.  Made me wish I had a place to stop for water in the middle of the run.

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Yearly goal progress:

GOALS:

1.  2020 (or 1560) miles run:  1056.88 for the year (57.92 miles ahead of 2020).  

2.  5000 Pull ups: 2565 (92 ahead of pace) Over halfway there now.  I've been hitting the pullups pretty hard the last 2 weeks although I tapered off a bit this weekend.

3.  5000 Pushups/Bench:  2593 (120 ahead of pace)…175 didn't feel great today by I got in 3 sets of 10... had to cheat on the last set and rest for a few seconds after the first 7 before knocking out the last 3.  I don't know if I'd do better if I lifted twice a week instead of once.

4.  50 hour stationary bike:  25:51 hours... I was tired this morning but was still able to get myself onto the bike for a 50 minute ride.  Nothing spectacular but I'm over the 1/2 point.

5.  12500 Steps a day:  146,413 for the week, averaging over 20k a day.

MONTHLY GOAL:  309k in June... Made my goal easily.  It was fun... I think I'll sign up for July.

5K workout with a 10K warm up

I've mentioned before that for the last week I've felt pretty great.  Today was no exception.

It started with a good night sleep with a relatively early bedtime shortly after 9pm.  I woke up just slightly before my 3:27 alarm at 3:20am, wide awake and ready to go.  A couple sips of coffee and #2 was working for me.  5 lbs lighter I headed out the door to meet up with my group.

The temp was a decent 59 degrees but the air was thick with humidity.  Not optimal conditions but not bad either and didn't seem to impact performance.

We took out the first mile a bit slow at 7:39, and eased into the pace with the 2nd mile at 7:09.  Down to 7:02 for the 3rd mile and 6:58 for the 4th.  I felt good so far and was running loose and relaxed and letting my running partner set the pace for the most part (he'd slow down 3/4 up the hills and I'd wind up passing him a bit to maintain pace).

Hitting mile 5 I must have picked up the effort a bit because it split in 7:03 pace despite the elevation gain.  I tried to maintain that effort through mile 6 and hit it in 6:48.  10K and I was still feeling really good and was ready to start pushing.  Up another long hill for mile 7 I continued the effort and split it in 6:56.

Tuesday I turned around at the top of the hill and wound up averaging 7:01 for the 8.34 mile run.  Today, I figured I'd run an extra mile and give myself more time to go under 7...  Cresting the hill towards the 7 mile point I clapped my hands.  It was go time!!!

Mile 7 to the turn around point... I lost a bit of momentum at the 180 but quickly recovered.  One last small uphill and then a large downhill.  I was cruising now and hit the 8th mile in 6:33.  One more mile to go I found the next gear and pushed it.  By 8.75 I was hurting and could feel it in my stomach.  I rode the pace line, not quite dipping into the true pain zone.  Hit mile 9 at 6:23!  Felt good to finally dip under 6:30.  Let up a bit after 9 and finished up the final .35 at 6:28 pace.

• I ended up with a new Strava 5K PR of 20:28 which was only 3 seconds off the 20:25 I ran at Old Settlers Day last year (as well as some additional top efforts).  
• After the run I still feel pretty good and wound up going for a walk when I got back home and doing 36 pullups and 50 push ups.  
• This wasn't my fastest run of the year but it was definitely close to a top performance.
• The 6:23 was a nice confidence booster too... seemed like I could get down to 6:30 at the end of a run but would never see anything under.
• Strange but suddenly my HR is going higher then before without a bunch of pain.  For a while there I was doing fine in the 150-low 160's range but anything that got my HR much over 160 really hurt and also even when I did push it was like my HR didn't want to go higher.  Today I was up to the 170s by the end and I felt fine.  Hills have been much easier too and seem to correlate to the HR.  
• I was worried I was peaking/overtraining/plateauing but after today I feel like I'm reaching a new level of fitness.  

Athletic Greens or training adaptation?

At the beginning of this month I was feeling pretty worn down.  I was fatigued and my paces were slowing... I partly attributed it to the weather.

Later in the month I felt less fatigued but the paces were slower yet.  I ran 3 straight days of GA runs at 8:18 pace.  Maybe this was still the heat?

Then, suddenly this last week I started feeling better.  My legs are fresher and my paces picked up.  I ran a 4 mile recovery run at 8:05 pace and the weekend I ran 7:37 for 8 miles and 7:56 for 12 miles.  It was hot this weekend but the runs felt fairly easy overall and even more I barely felt tired after I was done.

Then Monday I woke up an hit my first good bike workout of the month... last few weeks I was dreading the bike, skipped a day, went short on another day, forced myself on it a different day... Monday I felt ready to go and rode no issue with no lingering fatigue.

Then today, at my group run I ran 8.34 miles as 7:01 pace.  It was a hard run but I never really went to the well or anything.  Closed out a 6:36 for the last mile and felt good at that pace.

8.34 miles
58:38
7:01 pace

Not 100% sure what caused the sudden turn around?

-Was it just a matter of getting used to the heat?

-Is my body adapting to the higher then ever before training load?

The only other wild card is that I got a subscription to Athletic Greens as an early Fathers Day present at the beginning of the week.  Could it actually be having an immediate and tangible effect?  Was I nutritionally deficient in some way that is now being fulfilled?

I'd would say placebo effect but I didn't even consider that it would have an effect until after my weekend runs... I run at perceived effort for most of my runs so a lot of time the pace is a bit of a surprise (i.e. I felt pretty much the same running 8:18 pace at the beginning of the month as I did running 7:57 pace on Sunday).

For now I'm just happy to be feeling better and plan to stick with the Athletic Greens for a couple months to see where things go.

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As a side note, I was a bit concerned I might have a stress fracture in my left foot yesterday... but it didn't hurt me in the slightest during todays run... I'm going to assume that if it doesn't hurt when I run at 7 min pace then its probably okay to run on it.  I'm thinking its probably a tendon thing now that flared due to sloppy form or something...

I've had quite a few niggles this month and they've all resolved without rest so hopefully I dodged another injury and it continues to improve.

Week 25 in Review

Almost halfway through 2020.  Despite all the havoc of the Coronavirus its been a good year of training so far.  Sure, I don't get to race but maybe that will be a good thing long term as I've been stringing together week after week of solid mileage and training.

After back to back weeks of 50+ miles I dropped off a hair and only fit in 47.6 miles.  Despite the slight dip, the mileage was more quality and I felt overall less fatigued then I have in a while.  All but one of my runs this week were under 8:00 pace and the only one that wasn't was a 4.34 recovery run at 8:05 pace.  

Just about everything is going great except for a hopefully small foot issue in the middle of my left foot (and hopefully not a stress fracture).  Not sure what it is really, but it normally doesn't bother me that much even when running...  Just will need to monitor and make sure it doesn't get worse.

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Workout updates:

Saturday

8.01 miles

1:01:01

7:37 pace

faster pace then I expected but overall not too hard of a run.  I pushed a bit but not really intentionally.  It felt like I was running at the pace my body wanted to run at is the best way to describe it.   I was a hot day and my heart rate was up in the upper 150s but and into the 160s but I never felt particularly strained at all.  Maybe just the heat I guess.

Sunday

12.10 miles

1:36:08

7:56 pace

Humid run on the rock island trail.  The running felt fine but the conditions were a bit miserable.  I was pretty much attacked by flying bugs for the first 5 miles of the run and it caused me to push the pace a bit.  After that things cleared up a bit.  12 miles is short for a Sunday and the run didn't take much out of me despite my HR being pretty high due to the heat.

Monday

Got in 1:03:00 on the bike today (20.05 miles).  Plenty of sweat but felt good.  

I have definitely been feeling way less fatigued the last week or so.  Not sure if it's just my body adapting to the training load or what... Natalie did get me a subscription to Athletic Greens for Father's day.  I'm always skeptical of supplements but maybe it's actually having some effect?!?

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Yearly goal progress:

GOALS:

1.  2020 (or 1560) miles run:  1004.3 for the year (44 miles ahead of 2020).  Hit that 1000 mile benchmark and we're not even halfway though the year...  excellent stuff!!!

2.  5000 Pull ups: 2423 (46 ahead of pace) Been killing the pullups again and feeling good doing it.  I did 6 chin-ups with Nori hanging on my feet yesterday (35 lbs?)… Again, I feel way less fatigued in everything I'm doing and it's reflecting in my numbers.

3.  5000 Pushups/Bench:  2483 (106 ahead of pace)…finally adapted to 175 and knocked out sets of 11, 10, 10 this morning.   One more week in June and then I'm ready for 185 in July.

4.  50 hour stationary bike:  25:01 hours... Not a lot of biking in June but today I felt good and knocked out an hour ride.  Halfway to my goal!

5.  12500 Steps a day:  Got through my step anniversary this weekend.  2 straight years of 12500 steps.

MONTHLY GOAL:  309k in June... currently at 149.936 for the month. 42 more miles over the next 8 days to get me to 192 for the June 309k challenge I signed up for.  Should have it in the bag... hope I didn't jinx myself.

In front of and behind the wheel

Yesterday I almost, almost got hit by a pickup truck.  Wasn't that close since I was prepared for it.  I was running across an intersection with no stop sign.  The truck was crossing the street I was running on but had a stop sign.  The driver fully stopped and I thought he saw me.  As I started to cross, he drove right in front of me.  I skidded to a stop and since there was loose gravel fell on my ass.  Driver never even saw me.  Wasn't really his fault... he was driving into the sun and I was running against traffic so he wouldn't really have been looking for me to be coming from where I was running from... I should have known better but assumed he was turning onto the main road instead of going straight on the country road.  I wasn't hurt and ultimately know big deal but it makes you think.

Wednesday 6/18/2020
7.01 miles
0:56:04
8:00 pace

Later on the way home from work I almost ran over a 10 year old kid driving a golf cart down the road.  I was turning left at a stop sign and checked left for a car but didn't expect a golf cart and almost didn't register it.  I started to creep forward and then hit the brake.  I guess I need to be more careful all around.

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Today I woke up at 3:30 for my early morning run and felt good having actually gotten some sleep.  I went out with the plan not to push it early and I stuck to the plan!  First mile in 7:27, mile 2 in 7:13, and mile 3 in 7:06.  Easing into it and I felt like I was flowing after the first 3 miles.  Continued to cruise at 7:13 and 7:15 for the next 2 miles.  At mile 6, I picked it up slightly and ran 7:04 for the next 2 miles.  Dropped the pace for the last mile for a 6:45 and finished with an extra .43 miles at 6:33 pace to make it an even hour.

Best I've felt on a fast run for a long time.  Just the right balance of effort without straining.

Thursday 6/19/2020
8.43 miles
1:00:03
7:07 pace

Short and fast

Last night I was tired and I didn't wake up feeling too much better so I decided to sleep in and wake up at 5:30 instead of 3:30.

Then I decided to run 5 miles instead of 8-9 miles.

Didn't know what to expect heading out the door for my normal 5 mile loop.  I went out relaxed and eased into my fast easy pace, hitting the first mile in 7:20.   Kind of expected to hold this effort for the rest of the run but pushed up the Maher hills and surprised myself with a 6:56 second mile.

After mile 2, the course flattened out and I got in the groove, hitting mile 3 in 6:44.  By mile 4 I was hurting a bit and kind of wanted to slow down.  I just stayed relaxed and tried not to push too hard and hit a 6:48.    Final mile I started to pick up the pace a bit and kicked at the end, finishing with a 6:29 last mile.

5.01 miles
34:22
6:52 pace

Felt good and went for a cooldown

1.26 miles
9:54
7:52 pace

I feel pretty good getting the extra sleep and running 6 miles instead of 9.  Easy run planned for Wednesday and then I'll see what I can pull off Thursday.

Week 24 in review

Week 24 brought a new mileage high of 52.36 (by .27 miles lol)…  I've dropped the pace a bit this week, partly intentionally slow recovery runs and partly due to fatigue, naturally slowing down my easy runs.

Saturday I ran:

8 miles
1:06:36
8:19 pace

mostly unremarkable except I snuck in 3 hill sprints and 3 flat out sprints into the middle of the run. HR peaked at 176 during one of the hills which is my highest HR during a run for quite a while.

Sunday I ran:

13.54
1:52:23
8:18 pace

Also unremarkable beside the fact that I left the house feeling super unmotivated, my HR was pretty low, but my legs were just dead.  I toughed it out and went further then initially planned.  Also, I finished strong with a 8:07, 7:59, 7:37 for the last 3 mile splits despite my general fatigue.  I've been pretty cognizant since the beginning of this training cycle to really hone in and focus at the end of long runs of maintaining form and posture.  Generally speaking I think I have better form and running efficiency on my faster pace work, relative to my easy pace.  Combine it all and I get my theory that finishing strong on long runs should reduce injury.  Also should help build toughness and fortify best habits for racing.

My left hip (which really hurt after running Tuesday) has seemed better every day.  I did take Ibuprofin before a couple of my runs which I've been trying not to do for the most part.  I also backed off the intensity a bit... I think it's going to be okay.

Yearly goal progress:

GOALS:

1.  2020 (or 1560) miles run:  958.13 for the year (36 miles ahead of 2020)… 2020 is now the primary goal and I'm almost week ahead for that

2.  5000 Pull ups: 2251 (30 behind pace) Not sure why I'm having trouble keeping up on these... besides being a bit fatigued from running.  

3.  5000 Pushups/Bench:  2322 (40 ahead of pace)…got my bench on this morning 3 X 10 at 175 plus some other work

4.  50 hour stationary bike:  23:58 hours... Still on pace here but have been slacking on the biking as well.  Mostly focused on running mileage and not a lot of energy left for everything else.

5.  12500 Steps a day:  still going... 5 days til my 2 year stepping anniversary 

MONTHLY GOAL:  309k in June... currently at 103.76 for the month.  Would like to break 200 miles for the month

cooler heads prevail

Things cooled down a bit... 57 degrees today at 4:30 am when I started my run.

Ran the first mile at 7:30 pace and it felt like a jog.  Then picked it up and ran a 6:48, 6:55, 6:58... 7:13 for mile 5 (net uphill), 7:02 for mile 6, 7:23 for mile 7 (net uphill although I did drop my effort a bit).  

Eased up a bit for mile 8 and 9 at 7:13 and 7:07... my heart rate dropped about 5 bpm over the last 2 miles and it was easy enough that I zoned out for a bit during the run which is always a good sign.

9.55 miles

1:08:07

7:08 pace

not quite sub-7 pace but it was a bit warmer and I finished feeling pretty strong.  Also have been dealing with what I think might be bursitis in my hip the last 3 runs.  Doesn't really bother me when I'm running but I get some sharp pain in certain random positions...  I felt it a bit today when running down hill but it didn't tighten up after my run like it did on Tuesday... maybe it's getting a bit better?

I feel like I'm not quite as fit as I was a month ago... not sure if I'm just tired from all the training, a bit hurt, effected by the heat, or maybe just not pushing quite as hard.  Definitely starting to plateau... might need to switch thing up here eventually but kind of want to know if there's going to be fall racing or not before I do.  

Bring the heat

All winter I was just waiting and waiting for summer.  Now it's finally here and I'm ready for winter.  The heat and humidity have been tough to adapt to.  Its slowing down my pace and playing with my mind.

8.25 miles today

1:00:34

7:20 pace

Is a 7:20 pace good?  Am I going too hard or not hard enough?  It felt plenty hard while I was running... but I felt fine pretty much as soon as the run stopped.

Definitely don't feel as fit or fast as even a month ago... maybe I peaked or maybe its just the heat.

For now, I'm just going to keep putting in the mileage.

Maybe I should run slower on my easy days.

Going long

Hit my longest run yesterday.  

17.01 miles in 2:22:09 miles.  

17.01

2:22:09

8:21 pace

Nothing eventful.  Ran on the Rock Island Trail and stopped halfway for a couple minutes for water.

Started slow but finished strong.  

Last two miles were my fastest 8:03 and a 7:52.

Nothing really hurt during the run and even more important, nothing hurt after.  I was pretty tired but that can be expected.

Yearly goal progress:

GOALS:

1.  2020 (or 1560) miles run:  909.25 for the year (26 miles ahead of 2020)… 2020 is now the primary goal

2.  5000 Pull ups: 2227 (41 ahead of pace) After being behind last week I started doing more and am caught up

3.  5000 Pushups/Bench:  2222 (36 ahead of pace)…Haven't done anything since last Monday but plan to lift this week still

4.  50 hour stationary bike:  23:18 hours... took today off but did bike outside yesterday.

5.  12500 Steps a day:  Going to hit 2 years straight later this month.