Running days, the last of June and beginning of Summer

I took a week off after that OTS assessment and when I tried to get out on the road, my legs felt like lead and my ankles were still hurting. I don't know what the problem is, but I think I'm coming down with a cold or flu or something as my head feels like I'm underwater and my ears are plugged. I have the Afton Trail Run coming July 4th and I'm very excited about it as this will be my first ultra trail race and what better way to get into the ultra scene, by starting 'small' at 50km which is 31 miles, 5 more than a full marathon.

I've started running again, albeit slowly and really not pushing. I'm glad that my cardio fitness is still intact, but my skeletal-muscular fitness still needs a lot of work. I'm approaching the Afton 50k as one long ass slow distance run. Just enjoy myself and complete it and prepare my body for Twin Cities come October.

June 20, 2015 @ 8:04 AM

Legs still feel dead, welcome to Overtraining world

Took a whole week off as I'm suffering from Overtraining syndrome. My legs have been protesting to move and I've been feeling super exhausted all week. Still not 100%, not even close to 80% as I felt myself slowing down immensely at the end when I normally can handle this distance and pace. Take another day off and re-asses for Monday. 

11.33 kmDistance
5:52 min/kmAvg Pace
771 CCalories
1:06:29Time
13 mElev Gain

148 bpmAvg HR
160 bpmMax HR

177 spmAvg Cadence
197 spmMax Cadence

June 22, 2015 @ 7:04 PM

Wk5 aerobic base - reset

After a full week off, I got back into it although my lower legs still feel achy but I'm sure this is from the extended time off as the effort level was a little too high for my HR and pacing (which I shouldn't be thinking about). This is almost a full reset as I don't want to panic right now.

10.12 kmDistance
6:00 min/kmAvg Pace
708 CCalories
1:00:40Time
15 mElev Gain

146 bpmAvg HR
158 bpmMax HR

179 spmAvg Cadence
199 spmMax Cadence

June 23, 2015 @ 6:08 PM

Hill Training at Westview Park

Good workout with Phil, Lori, Paul, Roberto and Sean.
7.83 kmDistance
5:30 min/kmAvg Pace
519 CCalories
43:01Time
63 mElev Gain

152 bpmAvg HR
167 bpmMax HR

174 spmAvg Cadence
218 spmMax Cadence

June 25, 2015 @ 10:38 PM

Wk 5 Broken ass, ankle and legs run

I felt good going into this run, and came out destroyed. I don't understand, but my achilles and ankles were just aching that I just stopped at the 6 mile mark and walked, limped home.

11.22 kmDistance
6:12 min/kmAvg Pace
704 CCalories
1:09:34Time
10 mElev Gain

139 bpmAvg HR
151 bpmMax HR

175 spmAvg Cadence
197 spmMax Cadence

June 29, 2015 @ 8:43 PM

Wk 6 aerobic base - hot, humid and loving it

The past couple of day I've been in a daze. My head feels like it's underwater and my ears are plugged. My legs feel like lead and both my ankles are just sore. I haven't run since last Thursday as I tried to take it easy and rest. Tonight I decided to go out and run, to take it easy and just ease into the run. Everything felt ok except the last mile where my body was aching but my pacing was even albeit a lot slower than I'm used to running. Part of it was the humidity, but I'm not complaining as I run about 3/4 of the year in the cold.  I'll keep a close watch on my health and hope that this bug passes.

9.11 kmDistance
6:02 min/kmAvg Pace
651 CCalories
54:55Time
8 mElev Gain

147 bpmAvg HR
155 bpmMax HR

179 spmAvg Cadence
210 spmMax Cadence

OTS and what it feels like to me

I've just managed to finish 3 weeks of running, but just barely. I learned from looking over my training log, that for the past 3 days I've been running too hard and I've pushed myself to my limits as I couldn't complete Sunday's LSD of a planned 13 miles. I only got just barely 4 miles in when I my legs just did not want to move. My left calve and both my achilles were just sore I can feel on the verge of a breakdown, so I just quit my run while I was just down Leila almost to the hospital and walked it home. Over Training Syndrome...OTS. UGH.

I'm actually very happy I did that because who knows what would have happened if I powered through. Well more likely a debilitating injury which would have left me on the shelf for a lot longer than I want or need to be.

Looking over my training log, I can tell exactly where I went wrong, but my ego got the better of me again and I decided to run for running's sake to keep a superficial streak alive when in reality my schedule conflict could not handle what my training plan had laid out.

Last Thursday, June 11, 2015 I headed out to City Park Runners and ran with the Thursday run club. It was a hot and humid day, but I was feeling really good and I know we normally run the Thursday runs at tempo. I was able to keep up with Lori, Geoff, Doug et al. who happen to be the more speedier group throughout the whole run. After the run I headed out to Assiniboine park to watch a friend of mine play ultimate frisbee.

It was Friday where I was just being an idiot. I felt great and was primed to head out in the evening, but I forgot I had my oldest daughter's year end dance recital. So after work, I attended that, and of course it ended late and after driving everyone home, it was already 10:00 PM and I didn't get out and start running by 10:20ish and I was in that anxious mindset to get the run done and over with because I had to get up early the next day to run with CPR for 8AM. I was already starting to strain close to the end of the run and forced myself to stop and walk the last block home to save my energy reserves.

Come Saturday morning, I get up for 6:30 AM after 5 hrs of sleep and ended up running another high tempo, high aerobic threshold run. It was hot and muggy and the last 2 miles, it was really starting to hurt over-extending myself to keep up with Dan and Phil. But what made the day worse, was when I got home, there was no rest as I had the girls with me this week and I had to do some driving to the bank and grocery shopping and then head out to a wedding to which we didn't get home until 11 PM and even though I passed out, I got woken up by my oldest for a ride home as she was at a friend's birthday party and it was 12:30. So my sleep was broken and it was hard to get relaxed and fall back asleep.

Then I decide to run again on Sunday and ended up with a fail.Too much on my plate as I'm also helping my sister prepare for a big move. I'm just feeling really worn out right now and will take Monday off and rest. As I actually don't even feel like running.

Running Days June 8 - 14

June 8, 2015 @ 6:46 PM

Wk3 aerobic base day 1 - run 15

This run is day 15 of a base building phase that I'm working on for TCM. I added another mile and half from last weeks build and even after yesterday's LSD I was able to get in a very good run with keeping all of my splits within 10-15 secs while maintaining a avg HR <140

11.40 kmDistance
6:03 min/kmAvg Pace
745 CCalories
1:09:04Time
12 mElev Gain

140 bpmAvg HR
150 bpmMax HR

180 spmAvg Cadence
197 spmMax Cadence

June 9, 2015 @ 6:06 PM

Wk3 day 2 aerobic hill work

Tonight I went out with Phil, Lori, Paul, Roberto and Osty and we did some hill work. I'm still in the base building phase so I was very cognizant of staying well within my aerobic threshold. I wanted to keep my HR on the uphills to 151(ish) bpm and on the downhill, I worked on stablizing to 145bpm. I'll do a 3 mile cool down in my neighborhood to stretch out my calve muscles.

7.78 kmDistance
5:32 min/kmAvg Pace
502 CCalories
43:08Time
74 mElev Gain

147 bpmAvg HR
159 bpmMax HR

174 spmAvg Cadence
195 spmMax Cadence

June 9, 2015 @ 7:45 PM

Wk3 day 2 post hill cool down. When I got home I noticed my calves were pretty tight and I didn't want them to seize up, so I went out and did a short block cool down run keeping it into the recovery zone. Legs feel better, next up I'll roll them after the shower.

June 10, 2015 @ 8:45 PM

Wk3 aerobic base day 3 <145bpm

Good run tonight, even with the lack of sleep from working the night before and putting in a full day at the office, plus running the hills last night. Took a nap when I got home then laced them up and told myself to run in the 145bpm zone. I sensed I was running fast but the effort was easy while in the 145bpm zone. Still too early to tell but it's looking and feeling really good. Happy about the splits, especially the last 4 miles were pretty even across the board and in line with my HR.

11.24 kmDistance
5:39 min/kmAvg Pace
713 CCalories
1:03:24Time
5 mElev Gain

143 bpmAvg HR
151 bpmMax HR

180 spmAvg Cadence
198 spmMax Cadence

June 11, 2015 @ 6:05 PM

Wk3 aerobic threshold kinda tempo day 4

Finally got to return to City Park Runners after almost a month away from the club. It obviously hasn't stopped me from running, but I was very happy to head out and run with the group. Tonight I ran pretty close to my aerobic threshold, and I was able to keep that going mostly because running with the faster people helped keep me honest with my effort, even while I was watching my HR. Good run, tomorrow will for sure be an easy day.

9.84 kmDistance
5:20 min/kmAvg Pace
647 CCalories
52:31Time
6 mElev Gain

151 bpmAvg HR
162 bpmMax HR

177 spmAvg Cadence
205 spmMax Cadence

June 12, 2015 @ 10:18 PM

Wk3 day 5 not too smart of a run. Getting too late in the evening when I started this run and was in a hurry. Went too fast to get the mileage in and I'm actually hurting a bit. Too many things going on to get in training.

8.85 kmDistance
6:06 min/kmAvg Pace
608 CCalories
53:58Time
10 mElev Gain

143 bpmAvg HR
153 bpmMax HR

179 spmAvg Cadence
204 spmMax Cadence

June 13, 2015 @ 8:01 AM

Wk3 day 6 Saturday with CPR

Ran late last night only to get up early this morning to run with CPR. No calories in me this morning so I didn't want to push myself and told myself to run comfortable. The run to Misery was comfortable and the run to Osbourne was not too bad. It was from Misery back to CPR which was getting hard, especially after the tracks going back into the park where I was pushing to keep up with Dan and Phil and it was evident in my HR. Good run but 2 days of aerobic threshold with this one pushing a little too hard is going to set me back if I keep this up. Tomorrow I'll run for 2 hrs at a very easy relaxed pace and see what distance it covers.

16.00 kmDistance
5:28 min/kmAvg Pace
1,020 CCalories
1:27:35Time
27 mElev Gain

149 bpmAvg HR
162 bpmMax HR

180 spmAvg Cadence
201 spmMax Cadence

June 14, 2015 @ 3:07 PM

Wk3 LSD run day 7 - Glad I failed

I was trying too hard to get going and I knew after the first 2 miles the 13 miler wasn't going to happen. The last 3 days I was running at way too high aerobic threshold without any recovery. Especially yesterday when I ran too fast with CPR after a late night run of a high threshold the night prior. Pushed my limit and glad I was able to realize my body was not responding even by going slow my calves and Achilles were sore. Rest up the whole day and see how I feel for tomorrow.

6.03 kmDistance
7:06 min/kmAvg Pace
384 CCalories
42:48Time
4 mElev Gain

124 bpmAvg HR
138 bpmMax HR

174 spmAvg Cadence
189 spmMax Cadence

Building things up patiently - Train, don't strain.

Over the past 2 weeks, I've been running everyday. The first week mileage (May 23 - 31) I was averaging 4 miles (6.5km) the first 4 days then ramping the mileage the last 3 days by 5, 7.5, 10 miles (8, 12, 16 km) respectively. And this past week I upped the daily mileage from 4 miles to 5.7 miles (9.2km) the first 4 days and the weekend ramp up of 7.5, 10, 13 miles (12, 16, 21 km).

After Fargo, I was trying to figure out why I crashed. Albeit I was able to go a little farther than my last marathon go at Twin Cities from mile 18 to mile 22, but what was frustrating was through all of the training going into Fargo with all that mileage, I was noticeably slowing down at mile 17 and finally had to stop and WALK at mile 22 and then the death march.

I don't want to do that again. I had to sit down and figure things out. I mentioned how I was following Rubbish Runner's (RR) blog and going through his sub-3 hour marathon and we had a pretty good back and forth email conversation about the plan. RR outlined how the plan was based on Arthur Lydiard's training principals. So I dug into Lydiard's history and discovered how he trained 1960 Olympic Champions (Peter Snell, Murray Halberg) and I was fascinated with the story and the history of that era. So I dug up all of the reading material I could find on Lydiard and he actually has a lot of his training principles available floating around the internet.

The only problem with all of that information, it was hard to sift through the noise and putting it all together to make sense within my capabilities. Lydiard was famous for his 100 mile (161km) week programs. And thinking to myself, how the hell? There are a lot of books out there with Lydiard's training principals written by Lydiard himself that can be found on Amazon. I couldn't find anything at my local library so as I was sifting through the Amazon catalog, I came upon Healthy Intelligent Training (HIT) by Arthur Livingstone and going by the reviews and finding out more from Letsrun.com forum boards, that book seemed to be one of the better written and concise resources based on Lydiard's principals. The author knew Lydiard and was coached by Barry Magee, who was a contemporary to Lydiard's original athletes (Snell and Halberg).

I picked up the book and read through it, pouring over all of the information along with the sub 3 hr plan and putting together my own plan. I consider myself a beginner and I've written out the plan so I'm tackling the distances in a slow and manageable progression. I've signed up for the Twin Cities marathon and with the way my plan is laid out, I'll have a 7 week base build, 4 weeks of transition (Hill training), 5 weeks of Peak conditioning (track work) and 3 week taper before the race. And with my Fargo marathon training over the past 4 months, I have the fitness carried over well into my base building phase.

And that is where my major focus is on right now...the base building phase. I believe it was a lack of aerobic development that was my downfall. I don't think I had enough of a base to be able to carry myself 26 miles as was proven when I literally died at mile 22 but was considerably slowing down at mile 17.

And so it began 2 weeks ago, running everyday, at an easy pace of ( 60 - 70% of Heart Rate Reserve (HRR) - 135 - 149bpm) and a couple of days of aerobic ( 70 - 80% HRR - 149 - 162bpm) with my long run at the end of the week. In the book HIT, Livingstone wrote:

The purpose of this phase was to systematically build the aerobic capacity to the highest level possible before commencing faster work. The biggest stimulus to the development of aerobic capacity is often uninterrupted time spent at higher aerobic or sub-threshold levels: especially with regard to the development of the very fine blood vessels in the running muscles. 

All of my current mileage has been building up systematically and I want to get it to the point where I'm running 2 hrs at an even effort. I'm currently not worried about pacing as I don't want to find myself straining to reach a certain pace as more a consistent effort. What I found the best about Lydiard's philosophy was, Train, Don't Strain.  It's still too early in the training cycle to draw any conclusions but I've been running every day and I'm able to continue with good recovery after my week ending LSD's and those higher aerobic zone runs.

Running Days June 1 - 7, 2015

June 1, 2015 @ 6:21 PM

Wk2 aerobic base day 1

Didn't sleep well the night before so I was a little apprehensive when I started the run. Felt good until I got to the turn to head back, then I started feeling hungry and I couldn't shake off the hunger until a mile away from home. Got caught in the rain on the way back, hmmm noticed my cadence is down, could just be an anamoly and I'm also tired. No aches or pains and I reasonably lengthened the distance for the week.

9.27 kmDistance
5:47 min/kmAvg Pace
620 CCalories
53:33Time
11 mElev Gain

147 bpmAvg HR
193 bpmMax HR

177 spmAvg Cadence
195 spmMax Cadence

June 2, 2015 @ 7:26 PM

Wk2 aerobic base easy recovery <145 bpm

Since this past Saturday I've been getting by on roughly 4-5 hrs of sleep a night and I'm now feeling very tired. Tonight's run should have been last night especially after Sunday's LSD. I think I ran too fast to start the week and was suffering for it today. I took it very easy, not worrying about the pace, but I can tell I'm exhausted because my HR was spiking from 130 to 200 bpm and I know I wasn't anywhere near a hard effort, especially on the way back with a strong SE headwind. I'll try to get back on track with sleeping and I'll carry on with a couple more days of easy recovery running.

9.28 kmDistance
6:35 min/kmAvg Pace
604 CCalories
1:01:02Time
8 mElev Gain

141 bpmAvg HR
200 bpmMax HR

181 spmAvg Cadence
197 spmMax Cadence

June 3, 2015 @ 6:44 PM

Wk2 day 3 aerobic evaluation

1 mile warm-up in the 137-149 bpm range. Then 3 miles in 147-157 bpm keeping a consistent progression with the last mile and a bit back down to 146-149 bpm cooldown. Felt good at the start and had no struggle in the 3 mile progression with the cooldown I was feeling a little ache in my right achilles so I slowed it down more so I don't feel completely bagged at the end of the run. Feel good post run with minor aches that will feel a lot better with the rolling stick.

9.26 kmDistance
5:36 min/kmAvg Pace
605 CCalories
51:49Time
9 mElev Gain

147 bpmAvg HR
157 bpmMax HR

179 spmAvg Cadence
199 spmMax Cadence

June 4, 2015 @ 8:04 PM

Wk2 aerobic recovery day 4

Last night's evaluation run took a little out of me and I was feeling a little achy today from the office. My body knew I had to run in zone1 so I didn't spike it close to 150 bpm and I'm happy about that. It's starting to show me I'm learning about controlling my pace and I'm understanding what a true recovery run is all about. During the start, I was feeling aches in my right hip and my ankles were flaring, but after some steady mileage, the aches started to go away.

9.29 kmDistance
6:27 min/kmAvg Pace
604 CCalories
59:52Time
6 mElev Gain

134 bpmAvg HR
146 bpmMax HR

181 spmAvg Cadence
231 spmMax Cadence

June 5, 2015 @ 8:18 PM

Wk2 aerobic base day 5

This run felt pretty good, especially after the recovery run the day before. Nice warm at 1 mile @ 134bpm, then the next 5 miles between 8:50 - 9:00/mi @ 151bpm and cool down last mile to save my legs and strength for the next day. No real aches or pains, although I will admit the last mile I slowed down considerably, partly because my feet were hurting a bit and just a wave of exhaustion which I'm sure is due to a lack sleep over the past week.

12.02 kmDistance
5:47 min/kmAvg Pace
791 CCalories
1:09:31Time
8 mElev Gain

147 bpmAvg HR
157 bpmMax HR

180 spmAvg Cadence
190 spmMax Cadence

June 6, 2015 @ 2:54 PM

Wk2 aerobic 10 miler base run <150bpm

Wow, this is one of the closest things to my best training runs to date. My legs seemed to have an extra pop to them and I was able to keep a decent leg turnover and keep my HR in the aerobic zone. I'm surprised by my pace as I did not focus on that during the run at all. I'm starting to understand the mechanics needed to keep moving forward at an easier pace. The drive from the hips to knees as I'm moving forward and the toe off that creates that whip effect. If I can capture that feeling and bottle it, but I can't so I'll have to work on that consistently. Feet are tingling, but I'm pleasantly exhausted and will be ready for tomorrows LSD.

16.03 kmDistance
5:51 min/kmAvg Pace
1,065 CCalories
1:33:44Time
7 mElev Gain

146 bpmAvg HR
158 bpmMax HR

179 spmAvg Cadence
208 spmMax Cadence

June 7, 2015 @ 2:47 PM

Wk2 LSD First the humidity then the rain and of course the hail

It was very humid heading out and I found a new route that has rolling terrain then my normal route to Kildonan park with one lap and an out and back would make it just shy of 14 miles. But then the rain started coming down very hard as I was heading out of Kildonan park and then the hail came down even harder. Had to hide under a tree to wait it out. The run back got a little tough with the humidity and I cut the run short at mile 13 and picked up a Gatorade at the corner store and walked it back home to cool down and rest my legs. Had to remove my HRM strap at mile 10 as it was cutting into my abdomen and giving me an akeloid scar. :(