The Rebuild

After the completion of Fargo and looking back at my training log, I was thinking of how can I improve and crack that sub 4 hr time?

I put in over 500 miles to get a 4:14:30 time, which I beat my previous PR by 13 minutes done at Twin Cities Marathon in October 2014. My fitness is still not where I want it to be. Mind you I was doing all of my training runs in the dead of winter where temperatures dipped -40C/-40F and it was hard to get in decent training runs. I thought just being out there in the deep freeze of winter would help. But as I was looking at my moods and energy levels with my RHR and training HR's I at times think I was running too much too hard and I would carry on my next training run a little more tired than recovered which brought about slower times as I was seeing especially during the Peak phase.

And I have to admit doing a lot of my runs in the aerobic zone helped a lot, but I think I need to run more and build a stronger base so I can run better and stronger during the Transition and Peak phases and be able to handle LSD's of 16-24 miles without exhausting my energy levels.

I started looking around the blog-o-sphere and came across Rubbish Runner and was fascinated with his progress. I'm a little older than him by a couple of years so we aren't that far off in age, so I figured I'd reach out to him for a little bit of training advice. I'm still very new to running (3 years) and I'm nowhere near his level yet, but being patient and just sticking with running and training, I figure I'll crack that sub 4hr marathon in due time.

So I struck up an email conversation with Rubbish Runner blogger about training zones as I was reading up on his sub 3 hour marathon training plan. We mostly discussed the topic of Heart Rate training zones. And I was able to establish new training zones based on my recent performance in Fargo. These training zones will be in preparation for a Fall marathon, which will most likely be the Twin Cities Marathon on October 4, 2015.

New Training Zones:

So with a Resting Heart Rate (RHR) of 52 and a Maximum Heart Rate (MHR) of 190.
Zone 1 (LSD, Easy and Recovery runs) 60 - 70% of Heart Rate Reserve (HRR) - 135 - 149bpm
Zone 2 (Aerobic or Target HR zone) 70 - 80% HRR - 149 - 162bpm
Zone 3 (Anaerobic zone) 80 - 90% HRR 162 - 176bpm
Zone 4 (V02 max) 90 - 100% HRR 176 - 190bpm

May 2015 > 20 - 24 Running Days [BASE]

May 20, 2015 @ 7:52 PM

Beautiful evening, just had to get out to run. Wasn't feeling any pain in the right foot the Fargo marathon as I thought I might have plantar fasciitis (still might) but I wanted to get out and run.

Too much too far too soon. Should have listened to that voice of reason and not run so far and maybe ran a little too fast. It's been 10 days since the marathon and even though I felt great today those same aches crept up during the latter stages of the run. Stupid ego...this might have set me back as my right foot is now aching again.

Ended up walking the last 3km....sigh.

10.30 kmDistance
7:26 min/kmAvg Pace
625 CCalories
1:16:32Time
6 mElev Gain

132 bpmAvg HR
211 bpmMax HR

164 spmAvg Cadence
200 spmMax Cadence

May 23, 2015 @ 11:09 AM

Slow crawl back to basebuilding. Purpose of this run was to test out my right foot to see if any aches and pains creep up. 

Happy to report nothing major except maybe the front of my right toes were tingling for a little bit. I'm thinking it was more of the process of over-thinking this whole run convincing myself if this was a good thing to do. By the time I was out and running it was reading 31C today so it was a little bit of a challenge to keep my HR at 145 range. I forced myself to slow down a lot throughout the run, but very mindful of keeping the cadence up to 180 which kept my running form in check. Over all happy with how it went. I'll keep going the 5k distance for the rest of the week and then slowly start building up the base again.

5.42 kmDistance
6:15 min/kmAvg Pace
407 CCalories
33:54Time
1 mElev Gain

148 bpmAvg HR
161 bpmMax HR

182 spmAvg Cadence
190 spmMax Cadence

May 24, 2015 @ 11:12 AM

Well I now know that 6km seems to be my limit for now. I actually didn't feel any aches during the run and I kept my HRM below 150 despite the +27C heat. But it was after the run where it started to feel achy, about 1 hr after. I'll roll my foot out to strengthen it up.

6.41 kmDistance
6:20 min/kmAvg Pace
456 CCalories
40:36Time
3 mElev Gain

145 bpmAvg HR
162 bpmMax HR

182 spmAvg Cadence
192 spmMax Cadence