Category Training

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.

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.

Today was thresholds, 10 minutes z2, 10 minutes z4, 10 minutes z2 then cool down. Pretty easy day all in all. Due to the OMFG cold we took the hilly route because it has a windbreak and runs sideways to the north wind that was blowing around 30mph.

Shockingly there was no one else out running today. An 11 degree windchill seems to keep people home a lot.

We did ‘okay’. One thing we dd was backtrack our marathon schedule up by 6 weeks so it matched up with Little Rock Marathon race on March 3rd. So we’re doing the same runs we did 6 weeks ago. This gives us a direct way to check progress.

On this one we had a better average pace by a few seconds. Our z4 pace was 30 seconds slower but this route included a lot of hills, mostly up hill for the z4 section whereas the one back in November had no hills. So while at first glance I was disappointed in the minimal appearing progress once you took the hills into account, I was running on an hour of sleep and no carbs and I was okay with it.

One thing I’m trying to do with this brand new year is look on the brighter side of things. It’s hard, I’m a dyed in the wool pessimist because you’re disappointed less often that way and pleasently surprised more often. But even old dogs can occasionally learn new tricks.

We’re planning on doing a 50K, mentioned that before. But a LOT of 50K’s have a LOT of vertical change. So… after my 25K almost killing me from hills (true story) we’re working hills into our weekly rotation of training. On one ‘easy’ day we’re going to go run up and down a nearby trail hill. Semi technical, maybe a 5 out of 10. It’s about a fifth of a mile with a 30% grade. Run up (or walk after the first couple) then scramble down. Lather rinse repeat.

That’s what we did today. 30 minutes worth got us 2 miles of hill work. It was a recovery 30 minute day. And I had to get on a meeting or I’d of extended it another couple of laps at least. Getting pretty damn tired of west coast people’s lack of consideratin for other time zones. If they didn’t also wander into the office between 10 and noon I wouldn’t be quite a pissed but a 2 hour time zone difference and a 3 to 5 hour get to work difference and they don’t bat an eye at scheduling meetings in my evening because it’s just their mid day. But I’m sure everyone has work issues.

Nothing really of note on this run. Cold but not OMFG cold.

Thought I’d start adding little notes on runs just to have something to look back on when I’m old and feeble (er).

Today the run was intervals, we backed up about 6 weeks in our schedule to have our end date in sync with our first full marathon.  FYI we’re running a full marathon in March.

Anyway this pulled us back a bit in effort level so this was a 15 minute warm up, then 5 repeats of 3 minute sprints + 90 second recovery then a cool down.

At this time both myself and Running Wife #1 (I have 3 now although one isn’t aware of it) have succumbed again to some level of injuries so we’re kind of having to take it easy anyway.

I was also on a conference call for work during this run and it was cold with a pretty bad head wind on top of that.  And I was under-dressed because I expected temps in the 50’s and it was in the 30s’.

Nothing super noteworthy about this run, we went south along Riverparks instead of our usual north as I wanted to try and cut down some of the noise from traffic. But it just caused more noise from wind as there are no wind breaks on that section at all.

In looking at the same run from 5 weeks ago, sadly there wasn’t any real improvement.  But I was distracted during the run due to the conference call and I don’t feel like I was putting 100% into it.  I know my RSS for that other run was probably a 8 or 9 and this was was maybe a 7.

Tomorrow is an easy run of 30 minutes but we’re going to change it to hills because we seriously need hill work.

We’re trying to find the ‘right’ 50K for 2018 to be our first time at that distance and it’s tough.   Between cut off times, total elevation change, scenery/location, expenses, it’s not an easy decision to make.

We have a 30K in 3 weeks and then our first full in 7 weeks.

Our training schedule today called for a 10K Race so at omfg early we headed out.  I was using the 10K PR workout I made for my last 10K race which has a slower 1 mile warm up, a faster 4.5 mile middle and then a faster yet .77 end.

We stuck to it fairly well till about 2/3rds of the way through and then we just kept going faster till the very end, ending up with all but 1 mile negative splits.  The 1 mile outlier was due to a water break but it was needed by yours truly.  My #runningwife not necessarily so much in spite of what she says but she likes to pretend she’s as bad as me at running so I don’t feel bad.  But I see what she does or doesn’t do.

As usual at a couple of points I hit that personal wall of “this is ridiculous” and as usual I pushed through it and kept going.  I’m not a saint, there are times the wall wins. But I can usually push through it.

In the end I cut almost 4 minutes off my last 10K Race and 2 and a half minutes off my PR from back in May.

As my #runningwife was quite quick to point out, it wasn’t her fastest 10K but it was her fastest 10K in the last several years. But since she insists on sticking to my pace my PR’s will be her PR’s until she decides to cut her boat anchor and move on.

The fact that the cooler temps shows that I have actually improved somewhat over the summer in spite of my summer race and training times is somewhat heartening.  I was starting to wonder if I’d hit the ‘this is as fast as I can be’ point.  Obviously there is a moment in everyone’s running where, that’s it, that’s all I can do with what I have to work with.

But maybe I’m not quite there yet after all.