Today was technically a day off so we decided to do stairs. We went next door to the 12 story building and went up and down the stairs a few times. (Un)surprising how you use different muscles to go up stairs than you do to go up hills and just run flats.
Didn’t do more than 25 minutes just to avoid serious strain since we’re going to be doing our last long run on Sunday of about 20 miles in preperation for our marathon in Little Rock.
Nothing really exciting here. A set of 6 1K intervals with a 90 second recovery between them after a 15 minute warmup and with a post 10 minute cool down.
Stupidly windy, like 30mph so coming back sucked balls against that wind.
So today we ran the Greenleaf Trail 30K. It was a lot of fun. At 19.5(ish) miles it was our longest distance and it took us a looong time. At our skill levels there was just a lot of trail we couldn’t run without significant risk. And with our first marathon in 4 weeks we chose to err on the side of caution.
This run was primarily just to have a long weekend run and to push our selves a bit.
We had a great time being outraged at the lack of flat ground, having to go miles on the side of a hill trying to walk on ground sloped at 45 degree angle which is super hard on the ankles.
Around mile 10 we got passed by a 67 year old woman, never did catch her.
Around mile 15-16 we started running into cramping problems with muscles we don’t normally use for due to road running primarily. For me it was my inside groin muscles, the ones that run down the inside of your thighs. For my RW it was hamstrings and assorted other places.
I used a GoPro for the first time and filmed some snippets on each mile although mile 18 and 19 got lost although I was able to do a second mile 19. Battery failure. That was fun and I learned some things about filming on a run. I now have a gimbal to help with keeping video steady that I need to learn to use.
When I get around to putting the videos together I’ll post them on the Run Salty channel on Youtube primarily for friends and family to pretend to enjoy watching. It’s really about having the memories to look back on later on down the road.
All in all it was a good run for multiple reasons, a it was just a lot of fun, b it pushed us a bit in terms of effort both mental and physical, c it was a lot of fun.
Equipment used:
Lone Peak 3.5 from Altra – Held up well, they’re servicable, not my ideal shoe but good enough
Stryd FootPod – Does not work well with a mix of run hike. Was almost a mile and a half short of the 19.5 run.
Garmin Fenix 5X – Best option of the watches out there for me for various reasons.
Road ID – So someone can identify the body.
Google Pixel 2 XL – Wonderful camera for taking still images and streaming music.
Saloman Skin 12 – Wonderful vest, highly recommend. Not perfect but very close.
Ultimate Directiojn Soft Flasks with Extended Nipples – Lets you drink your fuel without having to take the flask out.
Source Hydration Bladder – The Milspec version 2L with insulated hose in Coyote Brown
EFuel – Wonderful drink mix for fueling. Works very well for me.
EGel – Wonderful gels for fueling. Works very well for me.
GoPro Hero 4 Silver – Audio sucks while its in it’s case. Just be aware. Mounted to a selfie stick of my own design and 3D printed on a MakerWorks MendelMax 3 printer in PLA.
Garmin HR Senson on Polar Chest Belt – HR monitoring sucked for some reason with a metric butt ton of drop outs and missing data.
Underarmor bike shorts, Champion shorts, REI Thin Base Layer shirt, Halo skull cap
Had to run solo today due to running wife getting stuck with work bullshit at last minute. Kept it low energy, just half an hour of up and down Lip Buster hill. Lip Buster is longish hill that varies from 30 to 45 degree angles. One up and down is 200′ of elevation change, 100 up, 100 down. That’s based on the altimeter on my Fenix 5X.
Calves were a little anxious the first couple of laps up and down but quieted down by the end but I have what is shaping up to be a hilly, wet, muddy, fun 31K in 4 days so I didn’t want to push it.
Today was a kind of long run. We have our first 30K next weekend so we held back a bit and only ran for 2 hours and then did 30 minutes of hill climbs.
The run went okay, as usual I didn’t hit my stride till about mile 7 or 8 at which point running sucks less. No offense to anyone who loves running and thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world. If that works for you great. For me it’s just a constant fight between me and Lad (Lazy Ass Dennis) who’s constantly trying to get me to stop.
With my and subsequently Running Wife Ana’s run walk schedule we’re doing right at 11 minute miles. That’s 9 minutes of around 10:30 to 10:45 pacing and 1 minute of 17-18 minute pace recovery. So far we’re able to keep that up reasonably well.
If we can push enough to keep that going for 26.2 miles in Little Rock on March 4th we’ll break 5 hours for our first marathon and honestly I think that woudl be super cool. But realistically I assume we’re going to have to have a pee break at least once which adds a couple of minutes. And we’ll need to get some water refills which adds a couple or three minutes. So… if we break 5:15:00 that as well would be awesome. If we break 5:30:00 that’s going to be okay with me.
With hill climbs we can do roughly 1 up and down every 5 minutes. That works out to roughly 1200 feet of elevation change, 600 up, 600 down. It’s a pretty long hill. And most of it is super steep. It has the colloquial name of “Lipbuster”.
This was also the first time we happened to be there while the Fleet Feet trail runners were heading out. I’m guessing each pacer had a couple of people in tow. There were 4 or 5 groupings if I remember right.
This week we’ll be taking it a bit easier, just a couple of maintenance runs with one hill session. Hills are my nemesis right now after Pumpkin’ Holler gave me a case of Rhabdomyolosis
And since there are very few ultra’s that aren’t just laps that don’t have some elevation change. Hence adding hills.
It’s premature but with a half marathon distance being a weekly thing now, and a full scheduled, I’m hoping to get a 50K in this year, I think a 50K is doable for me. So now a 50mile is a glimmer in the distance as a “I wonder if…”
So today was hill day. Super slow at 17 minutes a mile but did 45 minutes up and down the hill known as Lipbuster at the local trail area. It’s about 10 stories worth of uphill at a 30 to 45 degree slope. Uphill is a walk, downhill is a scramble.
it runs North / South and is open so wind is an issue. It funnels any wind pretty harshly and going down hill with that cold wind makes me tear up which makes scrambling down the hill a hair dangerous.
Total elevation change for 45 minutes was right around 1050 feet. We’re going to be including more of these hill days in our training as the 50k’s that look the best have 1000’s of feet of elevation change.
Today wasn’t super fun but really that can be said of any run. 🙂 It was 10 minute sprints with a 2 minute recovery. 2 minutes is too long a recovery for one thing. Its long enough I really don’t want to start up again.
We did fairly well, averaged 9:01 min miles during the sprints which is decent for us. Each sprint was slightly faster than the previous one which is always good.
My primary running wife wasn’t having a good day was lagging behind at a couple of spots, I slowed very slightly and she caught up pretty easily because she’s a bad ass like that.
I wanted to run some calibration laps to make sure my Stryd was dialed in. After the 16 miles yesterday and it being cold and windy, LAD or Lazy Ass Dennis was in full force. After 2 laps LAD was sitting on my shoulder “2 Laps is enough to confirm the stryd, it’s cold out here and that wind is ripping right through this polyester.”
Much like the Blerch, LAD tries to sabotage my dedication all the time. It’s been a 19 month fight agasinst the little bastard and so far he’s lost. And this time was no different. At a mile he was really bitching. So guess what LAD? You’re doing 2 miles now. At 2 miles he was whining big time. Hey we’re doing a 5K now and the last lap is going to be at 8 minutes. You want to try for 4 miles?
Its these kinds of conversations one has when it’s below freezing and super windy that keep running interesting.
Ran a 10K with one of my running wives this morning. it was her first 10K. It’s interesting how much running so slow, 14 min mile pace, which at one time was my pace interferes with my current stride/gait/etc. 6 miles at that pace feels like 12 at my current pace of 11 ish average.
Nothing super significant about this run really. We came, we saw, we ran, we finished.
Today our training called for us to run a Half Marathon which we did, 6.55 out and back. It was cold but not super windy so it wasn’t too bad. I did our usual run/walk cycle for long runs of 9 minutes on, 1 minute off which so far has been working for me.
Our time was 2:37 which included a couple of longer walks for ‘aid station breaks’ and one stop to stretch. That time is as fast as my second PR and 10 minutes slower than my current PR. For a RSS it was maybe a 7. We could have gone faster but we’re both not in the best shape leg wise so there was no need to push it.
After the road half we did a few miles of trail jogging with a couple of friends. Which was fun seeing one of them experience trails for the first time and somewhat technical trails at that.
We have a 30K in two weeks and I’d rather run it a little slower and finish than blow something up and get a DNF.
Being we started at 6:30 a.m. in the dark and 27 degrees there was no one else there. There was a car in the parking lot when we pulled in but they left before we got started. It’s weird how that happens…
For instance yesterday I ran with my real wife and secondary running wife and there were 4 or 5 cars in the lot that people just sat in. I find that odd. I’d rather be at home or anywhere but a parked car in a park parking lot on a cold day.
Yesterday’s run was just a low speed maintenance run or that was the intent but at mile 3.79 I came down with a massive case of cramping in my left hamstring, enough I had trouble walking much less running. As it happens I wasn’t too far from the car so I was able to hobble to it and call it a day while my wife finished her run. And I was seriously energy deficit during that short slow run.
I was concerned today with our long run but I loaded up on magnesium, salt tablets, pedialyte, turmeric and tart cherry extract last night and I was ‘okay’ today. It felt like my hammies were on the verge of cramping after 5 or 6 miles in but they played nice and didn’t.
I’ve restarted my PT again due to ITB issues coming back and I’m doing a fair bit of resistance training with a elastic band and ankle cuff including back kicks so that I’m sure had something to do with it. On top of that I spent most of the day before the run at two different funerals which are energy sapping to say the least. Funerals also drive home the fact that we have a finite amount of time to do the things we might like to do before the end. And at age 52 my time is more limited than a lot of folks. So it left me feeling the pressure a bit of trying to accomplish my goals regarding running. i.e. do a marathon, do a 50K, consider a 50mile, think about a 100mile.
Tomorrow is an off day both from work and training so I’ll do more leg PT and maybe some curls, the ‘guns’ are sad these days. Not that they’ve ever been impressive but they certainly have looked better.
Moral of this story is, there are good days, bad days and days that don’t matter in the slightest but you have a limited amount of days to experience so take some time to get something done other than watch another vapid episode of some sit-com, rom-com, drama or worst offender of all a ‘reality’ show. There is very likely to come a time you’ll do the ‘if only’ game with yourself.