Monday, July 29, 2013

Training log - Week ending 7/28/13

This week was 33 miles of “real running” plus 13 “miles” pool running, "6 miles" on the arc-trainer, and 3000 yards of swimming breathing drills -- training log is here.  

Heh - and the mileage keeps falling.  I'll was feeling good this week, so I went ahead and raced a track mile on Wednesday night, following it by sleepwalking through a 5K tempo on Friday morning (36 hours later).  I was exhausted on Friday morning, thanks to a stretch of insomnia, but went ahead and did the tempo anyway (despite my coach's stern reminder of "if you feel like you are not recovered, skip this workout" - mea culpa).

And then I was sore everywhere.  Not one huge OMG I've injured this, but about 5 different muscles etc that demanded a day off, lest they become injuries.  Saturday, usually an easy 10, became an easy hour in the pool.

Again, mea culpa.  But I realized that I made not one but two mistakes.  The first was the obvious, doing the mile race, followed by the tempo.  The second is a bit more subtle.

I've know for some time that I'm pretty durable and can handle a lot of work if a) I build up to it carefully, and b) my speedwork is a relatively small proportion of my overall mileage.  But, when I take more than a day or two off, I need to ramp up carefully.

That's not what I've done the past few weeks.  Instead, I felt run down, with low iron, so I took several days down.  Then as soon as I felt good, I jumped back into workouts.  Soon after that, I got a tight calf, so I took a few more non-running days.  And then I jumped right back into it again.  And I ended up tweaking a bunch of stuff again.

As of Monday, I feel good, but if I rush right back into workouts, I'm just going to tweak something else (again). It's a bad cycle that will end up in a string of sub-par races and finally injury (likely in mid-September or early October) that will knock me out for the rest of the season.

So the plan for the near future is to do what I should have done two weeks ago.  Carefully ramp my mileage back up, skipping the intensity and the speed work.  And then come back to workouts, carefully, after I have quite a few easy runs under my belt.

It's going to really suck to miss tomorrow's workout, especially since I feel fine right now.  But I can either discipline myself now, or suffer later.  And hey, if I had been slower to come back a few weeks ago, I wouldn't be missing workouts now :)


Dailies

Monday:  
In the morning, 1500 yards of swimming breathing drills plus some upper body strengthwork.  Foam rolling at night.

Tuesday: 
In the morning, 10 miles easy outside (8:09 pace) plus drills and strides.  Foamrolling at night.

Wednesday
:   In the morning, 1 miles very easy (testing different shoes), plus 500 yards very easy swimming.  In the evening, 6 miles, including a mile on the track in 5:39, followed by an ice bath.


Thursday:  
In the morning, 50 minutes of easy pool-running for "5" miles plus 1000 yards of swimming breathing drills.  Foam rolling at night.

Friday: 
In the morning, 10 miles, including a sleepwalking tempo 5K in 20:15 (split as 6:37, 6:30, 6:22, 0:46).  Followed with injury prevention work and 20 minutes shakeout pool-running.   Foam rolling at night.

Saturday:  
In the morning, upper body strengthwork and injury prevention work plus 60 minutes easy pool-running for "6 miles"; foam rolling in the afternoon.

Sunday:  
In the morning, a split long run - first did 6 miles easy outside (8:26 pace), followed by another 45 minutes on the arc-trainer at a moderately hard intensity (I'd say equivalent to another "6 miles" in effort).  Followed with injury prevention work.  Yoga and foam rolling at night.

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