Sunday, June 19, 2011

Training log - Week ending 6/19/11

This week was 46 miles of “real running” and 20 “miles” pool running plus 3000m of swimming -- training log is here.

I’m pretty happy with this week. We’ve shifted to doing hills instead of track interval work, and I’m pretty psyched – hill repeats seem to always give me a big fitness boost. Friday’s workout was a pretty long tempo workout, which is another workout that hurts at the time but yields big benefits for me.

I just need to remember that just because I can push every workout doesn’t mean I should. In particular, I’m trying to keep my tempo and long run aerobic, and to back off the pace any time they start to feel anaerobic. Doesn’t do me any good to push very hard in one workout if it means I’m not rested for the next.

Dailies

Monday: 40 minutes of easy pool-running in the morning (“4 miles”) plus 1000m of swimming breathing drills (all with pull-buoy), followed by injury prevention exercises. Tiny bit of foam-rolling+stretching at night (truncated due to urgent work issue)

Tuesday: In the morning, 9.5 miles, including 6 hill repeats – nonstop circuit of up a hill for about 2 minutes, a 90 second easy jog, a stride, and then some more easy jogging to the bottom (whole circuit takes 5 minutes) Numbers really don’t matter here, but we averaged 7:32 pace for the full 6 repeat circuit (just over 4 miles). Followed with a shakeout 20 minutes easy pool-running, for “2 miles,” and then some injury prevention exercises. Strength-training plus foam-rolling at night.

Wednesday: In the morning, 12 very easy miles outside (8:30 pace), followed by 1000m of swimming breathing drills (most with the pull buoy, some without). Yoga class at night.

Thursday: In the morning, "5 miles" of easy pool-running (50 minutes) followed by strength-training. Foam-rolling and stretching at night.

Friday: In the morning, 10.5 miles on the track, including a tempo workout totaling to 6 miles – the workout was 3 miles, 1 lap jog, 2 miles, 1 lap jog, 1 mile. Ended up running 20:31 for the three mile (6:55/6:52/6:44 – 6:53 pace), 13:34 for the two mile (6:50/6:44 – 6:47 pace), and 6:28 for the last mile. Tough one at the end (primarily because I got impatient early on and opened up too much). But happy to have finished it. Humidity was pretty bad (temp of 65, dewpoint of 64), and my HR wasn’t dropping at all on the recovery jogs. Followed with “3” miles of easy pool-running (30 minutes – shoulda only done 20, but a friend dropped by who’s going out of town, and I wanted to chat a bit). An easy pilates session (working on alignment) in the evening.

Saturday: In the morning, 40 minutes easy pool-running for “4 miles”, and then 1000m of swimming breathing drills (all with buoy). Upper-body/core strength-training plus injury prevention exercises, foam rolling, and stretching in the afternoon.

Sunday: Long run of 14 miles averaging 7:48 pace – started at 8:45 but dropped the pace down, with the last four miles being 7:20-ish. The pacing was a bit erratic in the middle, and we also stopped 5 times for water (all necessary – dewpoint of 70!). Followed with “2 miles” in the pool – 20 minutes very easy pool-running as a sub for an ice-bath. Injury prevention exercises and foam-rolling tonight.

5 comments:

  1. Great week, Cris! I'm impressed by the amount of activity you fit in there. Excellent paces, too. Do you feel like you're back to where you left off?

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  2. I'm actually not quite sure where I am. :) Before I started training with this group, I did my hard workouts in controlled conditions on the treadmill in temperatures like these (it's been pretty bad here, running temperature wise -- much more like August than June). And I did all of my outside runs at easy pace.

    Furthermore, I used to run my workouts at about 90% of race effort, and now I'm really riding the brakes on them for the most part - effort is more like 80-85%.

    So, I'm not really comparing apples to apples. However, I can say that this is the best I've ever felt running in this sort of humidity. The proof will be in the fall, when real racing starts. But I'm pretty optimistic about it, and where I am.

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  3. I'd say that's super positive. Just to be able to run hard in these conditions when you'd previously sworn it off is a testament to your improvement. Great stuff. And also, it's kind of cool that you can't compare directly, it's fun seeing how it'll unfold. I have a feeling you're going to be a lot more bulletproof now.

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  4. I agree with GIM- it's kinda cool the "unknown" aspect of it all. The fact that you can hit those kinds of paces in the heat and humidity says a lot!

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  5. wow, friday's tempo workout sounds tough. the weather is so hard on us now, but what gets me out there (even sporadically, in between declaring that i'm going to just run easy so i can heal :D ) is knowing that i'll be going into the fall strong. i think you are going to see great results later in the year from this consistent work. awesome week.

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