Training log - Week ending 7/24/2022

This week was 52 miles of running, ~1500 yards of swimming and 27 "miles" of pool-running -- training log is here.

This is supposedly week 2 of training for the Chicago Marathon, though I'm not sure I'm doing it (I'll decide in another week or two).

In my marathon cycles, I do 3-4 sets of a 2 week mini-cycle, alternating between the A week schedule and the B week schedule, before tapering.   In past cycles, on the A weeks I've done intervals on Tuesday, a tempo workout on Friday and then a progressive long run on Sunday (on the B week I do a Wednesday workout and then a marathon pace workout on Saturday). 

However, this time I'm mixing it up this cycle to try something different - instead of the tempo and progressive long run with 48 hours separation, I'm doing a longer track/hills workout on Friday morning and then an easy long run the next morning (with some strides in the second hour to keep it interesting).   Followed by a recovery day.

I don't think this is any harder than my previous schedule - in fact it feels a bit easier (you don't realize how hard progression runs are on the body until you don't do them).   But it's a different stress, and I think that one needs to switch up training from time to time in order to continue to respond.  So now my training two week cycle looks like this:

Week A: M: pool-running; T: intervals; W: easy miles; Th: pool-running; Fr: tempo or hill/tempo intervals; Sa: 18-20 miles easy with strides in middle; Su: pool-running.

Week B: M: A short run with 4-8 200s plus pool-running; T: easy miles; W: Stamina workout; Th: pool-running; F: easy miles; Sa: 16-17 miles including marathon pace work; Su: pool-running and/or easy miles.

We will see how it works.  And if I go through with the full cycle.

Dailies:

Monday:  9 "miles" of pool-running and upper body weights/core.   Foam rolling at night.  

Tuesday: 11.5 miles, including 6x800, 2x200 in 3:25, 3:21, 3:21, 3:18, 3:16, 3:12, 46, and 46.  2:xx-2:5x recovery between the 800s, and full recovery after the 200s.  Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming.  Foam rolling at night.

 

Wednesday:  Streaming yoga and 10.5 miles (9:44), with drills/strides.  Foam rolling in evening.

Thursday: 9 "miles" pool-running and upper body weights/core.  Foam rolling in evening

Friday: 12 miles, with a blended track/hill workout consisting of 3x10 second hill sprints (6% incline, jog to the bottom for recovery), then to the track for 2x2K in 8:54 and 8:49 with ~3 minutes jogged recovery in between.  Then back to the hill for 6 hill repeats (30 seconds each), cycling twice through a sequence of easy, moderate, powerful).  Then back to the track for 2K, 2x1K in 8:45, 4:21, and 4:18 with ~3 minutes jogged recovery between each. Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming. Foam rolling at night.

Saturday: 18 miles (9:20) mostly easy but with a fartlek of 8x1 minute on, 8 minutes easy starting in the second hour.  Followed with injury prevention work and 500 yards recovery swimming.  Foam rolling at night.

Sunday:  9 "miles" pool-running and streaming yoga.   Foam rolling at night.

Training log - Week ending 7/17/2022

This week was 52 miles of running, 1500 yards of swimming and 18 "miles" of pool-running -- training log is here.

Since I haven't raced in a while, I attempted a 5K parkrun on Saturday. I went out conservatively but still blew up (it was fairly warm and sticky, and I underestimated how conservative I needed to be). The good news was that my gait was not much of an issue in the race. I just ran slowly and paced poorly. Both of which are easier to fix than the dystonia. 

I'm now 12 weeks out from the Chicago Marathon - I'm not sure if I'm going to do it, but I lengthened my long run this weekend to preserve the option. Rather than do a progression, I kept the run mostly at very easy pace, but with a fartlek in the middle (the on sections were essentially strides). Since I raced the day before, I didn't want to do a progression run. Keeping it easy reduced the stress of the run slightly, and adding the 60 second pick-ups ensured that I didn't just shuffle the whole thing.

If I do decide to fully train for Chicago, I think I'll be substituting these types of long runs in for progression long runs.  I love long progression runs, and they are very easy for me.  Too easy, I think - I suspect I'm not getting an adequate stimulus from these runs anymore.   Time to swap things up a bit.

Dailies:

Monday:  9 "miles" of pool-running and yoga.   Foam rolling at night.  

Tuesday: 11 miles, including 1600, 5x800, 2x200 in 6:50, 3:17, 3:17, 3:16, 3:14, 3:14, 47, and 47.  5:38 recovery after the 1600, 3:0x-3:3x recovery after the 800s (too long, due to track congestion) and full recovery after the 200s.  Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming.  Foam rolling at night.

 

Wednesday: 8 miles (9:56), with drills/strides. Foam rolling in evening.

Thursday: 9 "miles" pool-running and upper body weights/core.  Foam rolling in evening

Friday: 4 miles (9:44) plus drills. Foam rolling at night.

Saturday: 3.5 mile warm-up, and 5K parkrun in 22:19.  Later 6 miles (9:40), leg injury prevention work, and 500 yards recovery swimming.  Foam rolling at night.

Sunday: 16.5 miles, mostly easy, but with a section of 8x(1 minute on; 8 minutes easy) in the middle of the long run.  Followed with 500 yards recovery swimming.  Foam rolling at night.

Race report: Anacostia Parkrun, July 16, 2022

I ran the Anacostia Park Run today, finishing in a time of 22:19, which was 2nd overall and top female in a very small (maybe 40 people?) event.

I haven't raced since Broad Street in early May, and so I needed to jump in something, anything.  I considered running the Harrisburg mile next Wednesday night, but it's a long drive up there and back, and fitting it into my schedule was looking harder and harder.  So I decided to find something to run this weekend, and settled on one of the local parkruns.   We have 5 parkruns locally; I opted for Anacostia because it was the closest one that was on a paved surface.

Park runs don't start until 9 am, so I slept in, stretched, and then arrived just after 8 am to start my warm-up (as always, 15-20 minutes easy jogging, 3 minutes at half-marathon effort, 4x30 seconds at 5K effort, and 4x10 seconds at mile effort).  I finished up around 8:40 and noted three things of interest.  1) I was the only person there besides the parkrun volunteers; 2) there was no water around; and 3) there was a helicopter hovering about 150 meters away over the lawn of a government building.

The good news for point 1 is that people started showing up about 5 minutes later.  As for point 2 - whelp that one was on me.  I was pretty thirsty, but there was no water, and not enough time to jog back to my car.  Next time I'll bring a bottle with me.

Point 3 was the interesting one.  Apparently the National Parks Service was doing some sort of rescue drill, where the helicopter would hover over the lawn, drop a hoist, raise the hoist, and then fly over us to briefly hover over the Anacostia River before flying back to the lawn to repeat.

All of which was really interesting to watch.  The strong breeze generated by the helicopter was also appreciated.  But...it was also ear-splitting loud - too loud to start the run (you couldn't hear the starter say "go").

Fortunately, they ended the drill shortly after 9 am, meaning that the park run was able to start.

***

It felt pretty hot and humid and the sun was bright, so I decided to go out conservatively and then hopefully build in the second half (the course was a simple out and back on a paved bike path).  We started, and I was immediately passed by 7 people.  That was refreshingly normal - I am NEVER fast off of the line.  What was also refreshingly normal was that my gait was actually holding up pretty well despite being near others.

I started building and soon pulled in a few people.  By about half a mile in, I was running comfortably and in second place, with a young girl (14, I think) in front.  She probably had about 20 seconds on me - I decided to work to reel her in gradually.

And I did reel her in, but at the same time started feeling worse and worse.  And the run just went downhill from there, with at least one walking break.  The funny thing was - I wasn't the only one this happened to - everyone was struggling.  The end result was that I ran/jogged my way to second place overall, about 20 seconds behind the male winner.

My plan had been to go out conservative and negative split.  Instead I ran the following splits:

Mile 1: 6:57
Mile 2: 7:11
Mile 3: 7:22
last .11: 47 seconds

Ooops.

The good news is that my bad race was due to poor execution and lack of fitness, not gait issues.  In fact, my gait felt pretty good except for a few steps at the end when I had to run on grass.  So I've got my work cut out for me now.

Other notes:

• According to WeatherUnderground, it was 83 degrees with a dew point of 74 at the start.  So a bit hotter than I expected it to be (and bright sunshine with no shade).  So not entirely surprising that I blew up.  I should have gone out MUCH more conservatively.
• I really need to bring a water bottle to the start next time - I don't think I did myself any favors starting the race feeling thirsty, even though it was so short a race.  But this is why it's important to race periodically - to remember this sort of stuff.
• I'd much rather be limited by lack of fitness and bad pacing than my gait, so I'm OK with this.   I also really want to jump into another race so I can execute better.

Training log - Week ending July 10, 2022

This week was 62 miles of running, ~1500 yards of swimming and 18 "miles" of pool-running -- training log is here.

I stepped back to 1mg of the Artane, and it seems to be helping a lot.  My gait isn't perfect, but it is much smoother than before, to the point where I feel like I am limited by lack of fitness rather than coordination.  

I did a few miles on my treadmill on Saturday afternoon because I hadn't run on it in a while, and was pleasantly surprised to run easily on it like a normal person (before, I had to touch the front panel at times to keep my balance).  

My workouts all felt a bit better too.  My running just feels more normal.  Like an out of shape normal, but that's OK - I can work with that.

Dailies:

Monday:  9 "miles" of pool-running and upper body weights/core.   Foam rolling at night.  

Tuesday: 12 miles, including 3x(1200, 800, 400).  Splits were 5:15, 3:25, 1:42; 5:03, 3:20, 1:39, and 4:59, 3:16, 95.  2:4x-2:5x recovery after the 1200s and 800s, and 1:3x recovery after the 400s.  Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming.  Foam rolling at night.

 

Wednesday: 11 miles (9:49), with drills/strides and streaming yoga. Foam rolling in evening.

Thursday: 9 "miles" pool-running and upper body weights/core.  Foam rolling in evening

Friday: 12 miles, with a blended track/hill workout consisting of 3x10 second hill sprints (6% incline, jog to the bottom for recovery), then to the track for 2x3200m in 14:18 and 14:10 with ~5:30 jogged recovery in between.  Then back to the hill for 6 hill repeats (25-35 seconds each), cycling twice through a sequence of easy, moderate, powerful).  Then back to the track for 4x200m in 48, 47, 47, and 47 with full recovery between. Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming. Foam rolling at night.

Saturday: 9 miles very easy (9:54), drills and strides, upper body weights/core and then 3 miles very easy on treadmill (9:37).  Foam rolling at night.

Sunday: 14.5 miles progressive, split as first 5 miles averaging 9:37 pace, next 4.5 miles averaging 8:23 pace, and the next 5 miles averaging 7:34 before a half-mile jog.   Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming.  Foam rolling at night.

Training log - Week ending 7/03/2022

This week was 58 miles of running, ~1500 yards of swimming and 18 "miles" of pool-running -- training log is here.

This was my first full week on Artane (I only take it on running days, not every day).  On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, I took half a tablet before running.  I ended up having pretty good workouts on Tuesday and Friday.  The dystonia wasn't totally gone, but much improved, and consequently I ran with or in front of those who were dropping me the week before.

Over the weekend, I bumped up the dose to a full tablet (the neurologist told me I could try this).  My hope was even more improvement.  However, it didn't improve the dystonia anymore, but did make me a bit weaker.  My 200m repeats on Sunday were comically slower than my 1200m repeats on Tuesday.  I also did hex bar deadlifts on both Tuesday and Sunday - Tuesday I deadlifted 140 pounds; on Sunday I deadlifted 105 pounds....

So...clearly that didn't work.  I'll return back to the half tablet and continue with that.  I have some baclofen that I was also prescribed - I'm debating whether I want to try that or just stick with the Artane.

Dailies:

Monday:  9 "miles" of pool-running and streaming yoga.   Foam rolling at night.  

Tuesday: 11 miles, including 4x1200, 2x400 in 5:09, 5:01, 4:58, 4:56, 93, and 95.  2:3x-2:5x recovery between the 1200s and full recovery between the 400s.  Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming.  Foam rolling at night.

 

Wednesday: Streaming yoga and 11 miles (9:44), with drills/strides. Foam rolling in evening.

Thursday: 9 "miles" pool-running and upper body weights/core.  Foam rolling in evening

Friday: 12 miles, with a blended track/hill workout consisting of 3x10 second hill sprints (6% incline, jog to the bottom for recovery), then to the track for 2x2K in 8:50 and 8:42, with ~3 minutes jogged recovery in between.  Then back to the hill for 6x0:45 hill repeats, cycling twice through a sequence of easy, moderate, powerful).  Then back to the track for 2K, 400m in 8:42 and 97, with ~3 minute recovery between. Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 meters recovery swimming. Foam rolling at night.

Saturday: 10 miles easy (9:55), drills and strides, and streaming yoga.  Foam rolling at night.

Sunday: 10 miles on the track, including 2400m in 10:51, 2 laps jog, and then 2x8x200m, with 200m jog between and 400m jog between sets.  Later did 4 miles very easy (10:10).  Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming.  Foam rolling at night.