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.