AM: did an hour of eliptical because I felt like my joints needed a break from the pounding. Went decently hard and was sweating like a beast. Says I burned 900cal but probably not true.
PM: 5.9 The elliptical recently made me realize that I am overstriding and not having enough cadence. Jack Daniels says that you should have roughly 180 cadence no matter what speed. Lately even though going about 7:30 pace I have been bounding way too much and I think that has been contributing to my bone and joint pain. So I am gonna try to fix this.
AM: 5.9 Found at least a mile of trails that can replace a mile on the road. But I might have to measure it with a gps. But it is at least as far as the road. Should also help my recent joint stiffness.
PM: 5.9 Went to the national chowder competition in newport RI today so probably didnt follow the diet very well but it is just one day. For some reason my legs feel really sore in the muscles i guess because of the ellipticaling the past two days lol. But got better 2 miles in. Been paying close attention to cadence and i think it is helping. Joints feel way better already.
AM: gps'ed the new route that includes a little over a mile of trail and its 6.15 miles not bad. Im feeling better but still only about 85%. Quads still sore but joint pain gone completely so thats good. Funny how I was feeling better back when I was doing some speed work and tempos than I have been for the past 2 weeks. Maybe I should jump into it. But maybe it just took my body that long to really feel the accumulative effect of miles. Once the quad soreness resolves I think I'll be ready to start workouts so whether that happens tomorrow or next week we will see.
AM: 4.9 woke up late and couldnt get the full distance in but it worked out because i decided today would be my first workout so will easily make up the mileage
PM: 5x(2x200 with 200 recovery + 1x400 with 400 recovery) workout per daniels 5k-15k plan. The first 6 weeks is base, second 6 weeks is early quality which focuses on repetitions to increase economy and speed at faster than race pace. I did the workout harder than daniels would suggest. He recommends all rep pace work to be the same pace (about mile pace). But 200s at mile pace seems too easy. So I hit 33.? for all but 2 of the 200's which I hit 34.? for. And the 400's unfortunately followed too closely at 74, 72.0! ouch, 73, 74, 72 (last one I cruised the first 300 and then sprinted the hell out of the final straightaway). I feel good. Nothing fell off. Nothing is hurting more than the muscle fatigue that should be there. The recoveries were ample so I don't think it says much about my fitness but it was a quality workout and Im not hurt so I say that is a success.
AM: 3.65 because my workout later is going to be longish.
PM: 6x1mile at threshold pace with 200m recovery. Was meaning to do cutdown starting at 6:16 but my first mile was 6:02 but felt easy so I continued with 5:58, 5:54, 5:46 shiit meant to hit 5:50 so I tried once more for that time and managed 5:48 oh well, then ran 5:36 last mile because I could without too too much difficulty. It was raining and between fatigue and not wanting water in my eyes I was closing them a lot and in the last lap I had one of those, "oh shit, I have to drive this boat" feelings as I went in the grass on the straight lol. Very solid workout. Especially since im a bit sore from monday's workout still. Luckily the 3rd workout this week is easy just getting a feel for the pace of vo2max. Seems like I should be able to do continuous 5 mile tempo at 6 min pace or just below given this workout. That seems very promising.
AM: 6.15 super slow probably 9min pace lol. Mostly tired, nothing hurts except tiny bit of hamstring soreness from monday still.
PM: 6.15 pooped grey, hope that doesnt mean my bile duct is obstructed lol I have not right upper quadrant abdominal pain so probably not. Passed a very attractive girl on the trails. Nothing else to report.
AM: 4.9 So there are good hurts and bad hurts. Good hurts are those that you know will eventually turn into better strength and fitness. These are usually either cardiorespiratory distress of vo2max or threshold runs or mild to moderate muscle soreness. Bad hurts are the ones that are or may become injuries or lead to decreased fitness. They are joint, bone, ligament pain as well as severe muscle soreness which means you have destroyed more muscle than you will recover. Today I am feeling a lot of good hurts in various muscles but decided that I am postponing my 3rd workout of the week at least until tomorrow. Next week has only 2 workouts tho they are slightly harder.
AM: 3.65 because workout in the evening will be long and I have plenty of miles. Feel GREAT. Then I took a huge dump halfway through and felt even better. Henry, bedoukian, you better watch out.
PM: Okay so I thought this workout was gonna be easy but when I reread it I realized the recoveries were half what I thought they were. It was 6x(600[200],400[100],200[100]) at VO2max pace (which I very optimistically put at 5:20) with no extra recovery between sets. And on top of that I was really calorie deprived eating just eggs and toast this morning and an apple mid afternoon. I held the pace together by a hair and actually went 1 sec under on almost all of them except 2 of the 600's at 2:02 and 2:01. But I also took an extra 400m recovery after the 3rd and 5th set otherwise I wouldn't have held it. I do hate VO2max work. So painful. Luckily none of it next week but the following week I have 5x1k but at least I get 3min recoveries on those.
AM: 4.9 funny how every time i feel remotely good I have a workout that afternoon. I guess that's a good thing? Looking forward to having 2 easy days in a row before my second workout and then 2 more easy days in a row may allow me to actually do a long run on sunday. Perhaps make it to some trails for that...
PM: workout 10x400[400] in 71 eek, 75, 73, 72, 73, 74, 73, 73, 72, 68.0! got sick to stomach after the 6th one and had to go poo which screwed up the recovery but oh well went too fast but didn't feel much muscle fatigue until the final one and you can see why. I have more speed than vo2max right now and can tell because I always went out in 35 sec to hit 73. Still need to work on moving my arms more. At these speeds arms matter a lot and can take a lot of strain off the legs.
AM: 6.15 feel pretty good. Bouncing back from workouts better now it seems. But once again trudged most of it due to calorie deficit. Only fuel for workouts lol. But really the overnight calorie deficit is the most important and if I wake up and eat before I run I would get sick and still not have the calories to run on since it takes too long to get into the system. 157.5 before run, 155.0 after.
PM: 6.15 easy. Started out stiff but loosened up as the run progressed.
PM: 6.15 Looking forward to tomorrow's threshold run. I think I can put up a 6:05 pace for 40min which would indicate sub 1:20 ability even this early in training. With more weight loss and continued grind of miles and workouts I think I can go 5:50 if not 5:45 pace for the half. My crazy dream goal is 1:15:?? Not so worried about my lack of long run as I looked back at my training last year and I didnt run more than 9 miles at a time for the 3 months prior to going 1:18:45. And the majority of my runs were under 7 miles. (4.25 in the am, 6.5 in the pm, only workouts were longer).
PM: 40 min tempo for 6.65 miles so 6:01 pace total, kept 6:05 pace perfectly for the first 4.5 miles then tried to track this dude down who was wearing vibram 5 fingers. So i put in about a 2:45 half mile and was sitting about 10 yards behind him recovering from the effort a little before kicking. He didnt notice I was there. Then alan comes along and says loudly "GO HAYNES" he was not cheering me on, but warning the guy that i was there. The guy started to kick and since I had another 10min to my run i decided to let him go. 30:15 for 5 miles and then cruised the last 10 min. 6:05 pace felt super easy. The 2:45 half mile took it out of me though.
PM: 6.5 need to drink more water. Felt sick all day until i realized i was thirsty then drank 5 pints of water over an hour and felt better 2 hours later. Gonna start downing a pint or 2 right when i get in from now on through the summer. Even with that much water, weighed in at 155.5 after the run but before drinking more.
AM: 4.9 hope the workout goes well. Also driving 22 hours home to alabama over the next 2 days. Getting up early and stopping by bedoukian's place in CT for a run.
PM: 4.9 no workout. no time because packing and need to show the girl a good time tonight since im leaving for 3 months. Will make it up, but its gonna be hard.
AM: got up at 3am after 3hrs sleep, drove 2.5hrs to redding, CT and ran 8.1 with bedoukian. Was very fun. Just like old times. Like we'd been running together every day and this was just another run. I did realize that his 70 miles per week is really equivalent to my 80-85 because he is on trails. Same effort is 1-1.5 min slower per mile so that makes 70-100min more running per week than it appears by miles which is like getting 10-15 more miles in to your CV system and leg muscles. Definitely not training the pounding quite like I am which I do think starts to be important for the half marathon. Its on roads and you have to be able to be loose and fast after 10+ miles of asphault pounding. But he will do fine with that. He is and always will be the long distance beast among us. And he has decent speed. I saw it when he was careening downhill on trails. Even with my "lack of caring for life or limb" mentality I thought he was going pretty fast. He just needs to find that again on the roads and track. Among the 3 in our little challenge, he has been the most consistent over the past 3 years and I will not yet count him out.
PM: drove another 9 hours after the am run down to salem, VA where I found a cat friendly hotel, put the cats in the room, and googled for the nearest track to get in my missed workout. First I went to this middle school with an asphault track, warmed up around the school, stretched, striders, then did the first 200 in 29sec easy and decided the track was not 400m or 200m but some weird distance that was not posted. So I then went across town to the high school and at first I didnt think they had a track, but it was big and they had tons of practice fields. So I ran around and finally found a massive 10 lane track that i didnt see before because it was raised on this plataue thingy. It was a super soft track, and the 10 lanes along with the curves being longer than the straightaways made it seem long and slow. Okay, so this workout was very strange times wise. Remember I had 3hrs sleep, 8miles on trails, and 11.5 hours in a car. So here we go 4x200 in 40, 40 (felt like i correctly sped up but apparently not), 37(thought I went way faster, but only just now hit my time), 36 (expected a 34 lol) 2x400 in 72, 74 (okay seem to have my legs back now for the most part) 1x800 2:25 (yay, this was worrying me, went out in 71 and back in 74, some lactic acid I will admit my arms got pretty stiff with it) 2x400 in 73, 75, 4x200 in 34, 32, 35, 29.16! (full on sprint, my 200m PR is 28.high). Okay weird workout but got it in and the 800 was well within my goal of 2:30. I do question whether these speed workouts would be better shorter with longer recoveries. The next one is 4x(200m[400], 800m[600]) or something like that. I ask, what is the point of doing 4 repeats of 1/2 of a race distance at race pace. That is very intense. As an integrating workout (integrating speed, lactic acid resistance, and endurance) in the final phase before a mile race I can understand it. But in the first phase of training for a much longer race I dont understand the reason. He seems to say he is training the CNS to run fast efficiently but in fact he is training the muscles and the lactic acid system. Basically I am thinking about changing these workouts to something more like 5-6x200m all out with full recovery and 4x4x200m with 200m between reps and 400m between sets doing cutdowns like 37, 35, 33, and nearly all out. The first workout actually builds speed. The second one teaches you to relax at speed. Opinions?
AM: 7.5 from the hotel. Found a nice dirt path that eventually turned into a trail and then eventually disappeared. Did 62min but figure i was slow especially on the trail section.
PM: 4 miles in the 95 degree heat at home. Its gonna be tough training here.
AM: 5 miles at 5am. 75F, 100% humidity even at 5am wtf. Was with some other people who are super slow so it was easy. Might continue to run with these people to keep my mornings relatively cool and very easy.
PM: DNF'ed this workout. 95F and very humid. Went to this 1000m stretch of road i measured out by the 200m years ago with a roller and amazingly the spray paint was still visible. I added some stacked rocks to make the markers more noticable. The stretch is almost flat but has a little uphill/downhill in the last/first 150m maybe 5-10ft total. So starting the workout I felt tired but decent. 3:18 first one in the uphill direction into a very light but noticable headwind felt fine. Second one 3:19 with the downhill and tailwind felt pretty hard. Figured I was just getting into the workout. Third one I hit a major wall, could not finish it, stopped at 800m in 2:41. Wanted to finish it out with 800s but I just couldnt. After a 40sec 400 I could not even do 800m so I packed it up. It was so freaking hot. I felt dizzy and nauseated but decided to finish the intended distance of 8 miles which was tough enough. I have decided that I AM going to do workouts in the morning from now on. There is just no way around it. There is no indoor track near here. And while at home I dont even have access to a treadmill unless I go find some temporary gym membership = lame.
AM: 6 with some triathletes. They suck at running. But they were better than the crew yesterday.
PM: 8 bainbridge loop. Super hot. Found a church with nobody at it and went to the back and found a hose and hosed myself down for a min just to drop my core body temp back to near normal.
Helen Keller 5 mile (5 Miles) 00:31:22, Place overall: 2, Place in age division: 2
Easy Miles
Marathon Pace Miles
Threshold Miles
VO2 Max Miles
Crosstraining miles
Total Miles
8.00
0.00
5.00
0.00
0.00
13.00
87F and super humid. Our very own imported ethiopian Hirbo Hirbo took it away with something like 28 low. He said that he loves the heat and even so this was a full 2 min slow because of the heat. It was hard. I didn't really race all out, but I did go a bit harder than I would have liked for a tempo. I just was running for place and number 3 was not too too far behind me and I wanted to discourage a kick. Afterwards I ran the course as cooldown with hirbo hirbo and some other dude. They almost dropped me going 7min pace in 90 degree weather on the COOLDOWN! lol. Anyway, I am pretty happy with it given the heat.
AM: 6 with the slowbies. Been trying to focus on arm swinging even when going slow because I have recently realized how much it helps when going fast and yet after a min or so of swinging decently my arms get tired lol. Then to the track for a sprint workout. Hardly a workout really but I got kicked off the track by football practice. Striders, stretches, 2x200m in 29.25 and 30.5 with full recovery mostly walking. Decided it was fine to get kicked off then anyway because im not used to sprinting and 200m gets a lot of lactic acid buildup. Maybe I should start with 100's or 150's? Really have to focus to keep form for 200m sprint but form is what it is about so maybe thats good. The track was terrible. Never going back to that track. They had stuff in lanes 1 and 2 and the track was asphault and uneven. Wore spikes but shouldnt have they didn't get very good grip on the asphault.
PM: Decided this mornings 'workout' wasnt enough so did 8x10sec steep uphill sprints with full recovery. I have decided that form, strength, and speed are the things lacking from my training. I should be making even more headway than I am (like how come college runners are SO much faster than me although we run similar mileage and types of workouts?) I refuse to believe that they all have superior genetics to me. I came into running late in life which might give me a bit of a disadvantage but maybe I can get that back through proper training.
AM: 4 pretty quick for a morning maybe 7 pace dunno no watch. So I know I always preach easy on easy days. And suddenly I have changed my tune. I think that I need to drop some mileage (to maybe 65 or 70 miles in doubles, so a lot of pretty short runs) and pick up the pace. After I get comfortable with that I can pick the mileage back up to where I am. There are a couple of reasons I have for this.
1. The reason for this is that running sub 6 pace and running 8-9min pace are totally different beasts. They take different biomechanics. If you are going to train biomechanics (which equates to running economy -- the piece where whole chunks of pace can be knocked off in a season) then you need to run with at least similar form to how you will be racing. Its that repetition that gives you the muscle memory that allows you to not worry about form and pace and yet stay economical.
2. After 2 months at high mileage I am going to have diminishing returns from it. I could take a serious bump in mileage say to 110 and go through another breakdown phase and either come out better or with an injury. The risk is too high and honestly it just takes too long at 8-9min pace. So I need to introduce a new stress to my training. That new stress will be pace. Hopefully my body will, over the course of several weeks, adapt to it as it adapts to mileage.
Im aiming for 7-7:30 pace for all of my easy runs but since I am doubling I can still hit decent mileage and have all of the runs very short so that they aren't too stressful and so that I can concentrate on good form throughout the run.
And it sets up another stress that I can add to my running after 3-6 weeks of this type of training which is increasing the mileage at the new pace. But I won't do that until I start feeling comfortable with this new regimen.
