Matthew Jordan
| Programming, Running, and ThingsTo keep things from getting long and repetitive - and because I don’t want to make that many tables - I’m going to stop putting all the metrics into these updates. I’ll wait for something impressive before throwing in all that detail…
Monday was a nice easy 5 miler, which I ended up completing at roughly a 9:51 pace. I’m finding that even though I’m a little fatigued from the substance runs, I quickly end up bumping against the maximum easy pace. I’ll probably need to be more conscious of my pacing for some easy runs, as I really should run some of them closer to a 10:00 min/mile to 10:20 min/mile pace. Anyway. I did notice that my hips were a bit sore afterwards, but I chalk that up to all the walking at the Monte Sano Art Show.
As an aside, I’ve always found it odd that if I walk 6 miles, my hips will want to straight up murder me, but if I run 12 miles, they don’t even make a squeak. Body mechanics be weird, yo.
Ah, speed work. I suspect that by the time I’m done with the speed work section of Hanson’s, this will be my least favorite day of training. Or tempo work. It remains to be seen.
The 1.5 mile warm up went just fine, and I made my way over to the local high school track. After two of the 600 meter intervals, I didn’t feel super great. When I ran the speed work last week, Hurricane Irma had just passed by and the day was cooler, even if it was humid. Not so this Tuesday; it was warm and humid, and I was feeling it. I kept glancing nervously at the ridgeline/treeline, waiting for the sun to peek out and start baking me. As I ran those endless loops, I lost count on which iteration was on. At one point I thought I had done six intervals; looking at my watch, I saw that I was actually only halfway. How the hell I lost count between four and six I have no idea, but F-bombs began to rain down onto the track. By the time I legitimately had hit six laps, nausea was pretty constant. At the same time, the sun peeked out from the treeline, starting my inevitable steaming/baking. Slightly panicked, the last two iterations became a blur. I was so damn happy when the Garmin beeped on the last interval and I could jog a mile and a half home. By the time I reached the house, I felt okay-ish, but I’m worried about next week. Even more so for the 5x1000m, which is going to be in Orlando.
Humidity sucks.
So this is really an 8 mile run, with 6 miles run at tempo and 2 miles run at easy pace. I was supposed to do five miles, but in week 9 this jumps to 8 miles at tempo pace, and I didn’t want a 3 mile jump. Knowing myself, that may do me in; if not physically, then psychologically. On top of that, I had a massage the night before. While I love them, and view them as being incredibly beneficial in the long term, they do usually make me more sore for a few days afterwards. Starting out I was a bit stiff, and the first tempo mile didn’t feel very good. It doesn’t help that there are several rolling hills on the route I chose. The first being near the end of mile 2, another half way through mile 3, and then a nasty one at about 2/3 of the way through mile 7.
After running the first three tempo miles (half-way, yeah!), I was getting pretty sluggish and tired. My refueling plan usually calls for water every two miles and something with energy every four miles, so I popped four Gu gel blocks. I’m still not sure if I like the blocks or the gels better. To their benefit, the packages for the blocks can be opened before a run, which means I’m not desperately trying to tear open a plastic package with my teeth while running. As those went down, I had a nice straight-ish section, which helped me to get some energy back. By the time I hit the mile 7 hill, I didn’t feel all that terrible. Not great, but not terrible. If I had to run two more tempo miles, I probably could have done it. The last easy mile was easy (as it should have been), although things felt like they were cramping up a bit as I finished. Overall pace was 8:50 min/mile, with my tempo pacing hold between 8:30 and 8:36.
Both the easy runs were easy, which is what they should be. The first was done at a 9:43 min/mile pace, the second at a 9:41 min/mile pace. At some point I’m going to need to slow down even further some of these easy runs. For me, the book recommends some easy runs to be run at ~9:40 min/mile and some at ~10:20 min/mile, and I’m definitely erring on the side of faster right now. As the substance runs gets harder, running some of these firmly in the “recovery” category is going to be important. And a challenge: it’s getting hard to run slower than 10:00 min/mile.
This was supposed to be a 10 mile long run, but I bumped this up to 12 miles based on my previous long runs. Things held together shockingly well until about the last three miles, at which point I started to feel my knees. Concerned, I tried to compensate by engaging my quads more consciously, which seemed to work. I never had a knee twinge during the long run, but things were a bit more sore in the knees than I’d like afterward. Maybe bumping the mileage on the long run wasn’t a good idea? I’m not sure. On the one hand, increasing mileage too much and running too fast/hard is how you injure yourself. On the other hand, that giant bump in two weeks scares the willies out of me, and this really was just a 3 mile bump over the previous week.
A larger concern for me after this long run is a hike I had planned at the Walls of Jericho tomorrow. I’ve never been there before, and I’ve heard rumors that the hike out is long and uphill. I’m going to push my Monday easy run to Wednesday, moving my “off day” to Monday and count the hike as “cross-training”. This is probably a bad idea, but I’ve been wanting to do this hike for the better part of a decade, and taking advantage of a free group hike is probably the only time I’d get to do it. So… here’s hoping my knees withstand a couple hours of downhill/uphill hiking.
Distance: 45.29 miles
Time: 8:07:24
Calories: 6782
F-Bombs: > 10