Training log - Week ending 1/1/2023

This week was 62 miles of running, 1000 yards of swimming and 24 "miles" of pool-running -- training log is here.

I'm now two weeks out from Houston.  My taper for this race is a bit different from my normal taper for two reasons:

1) This is the first time that I've trained and tapered for a marathon over the winter holidays.  It was important to me to still enjoy Christmas and New Years, and so I moved my biggest runs around to accommodate those holidays.  Normally I would have done either a 21 miler four weeks out and then a half-marathon three weeks out, or some combination of a 2x5 at marathon effort and a 21 miler three and four weeks out (don't really care about the order).  But...three weeks out was Christmas.  So instead I did my 21 miler four weeks out, and then reduced the 2x5 to a 2x4 so that I could do it two weeks out from the marathon and still recover.

2) With my ongoing neurological/dystonia issues, it seems that my traditional three week taper is now too much.  For the Chicago Marathon, my legs felt very fresh, but also extremely stiff and awkward, which I attribute to the reduction of running in the final week.  I think I could have run a better marathon with legs that had some residual fatigue but weren't as locked up.  Thus I'm changing my taper to do slightly more in the last two weeks.  My Houston taper will look more like the taper for a 10K than for a marathon.   A 4 mile tempo rather than a 5K tempo ten days out; 14 miles progressive rather than 12 miles aerobic seven days out; and a normal track workout on the Tuesday before, rather than 3-4x800.

Maybe it will work, and maybe not.  But I need to try different things, and so I'm trying this. 

As part of my accommodating the holidays, since I wanted to go out on Saturday night, I did my long run on Friday and planned a "maybe" hill workout on Sunday to work on form - if I woke up feeling lousy on Sunday, I'd just skip it. But I woke up on Sunday (later than normal) and actually felt pretty good, so I did it. 

As for Friday's long run, I was really happy with it.  That's the fastest I've run at marathon effort in quite some time, and those paces felt natural and my heart rate was right where it should have been for a marathon pace workout. [Like always, I ran the long run based on perceived effort rather than pace, using heart rate as a sanity check.]  

I also saw my neurologist again this week - he told me that the meds I'm on can take weeks or even months to be fully effective, so hopefully I'll continue to see improvement with each week.

Monday: Streaming yoga and12 "miles" pool-running.   Foam rolling at night. 

Tuesday: 12 miles, including 2x1200, 3x800, 2x200 in 5:25, 5:14, 3:21, 3:16, 3:12, 47, and 47, with recoveries of 2:3x-3:0x after the 1200s and 800s.  Full recovery for the 200s.  Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming.   Foam rolling in evening.

Wednesday: 9 miles very easy on the treadmill (9:31), upper body weights/core, and 3 miles very easy on treadmill (9:27)

Thursday: 12 "miles" of pool-running. Foam rolling at night. 

Friday: 14 miles, including a marathon effort workout of 2x4 miles in 29:29 (7:23 pace) and 29:09 (7:17 pace) with 1 mile float in 8:15 between.  Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming.  Foam rolling at night. 

Saturday: 12 miles very easy (9:35) plus drills/strides, and then streaming yoga.  Foam rolling in afternoon.

Sunday: 12 miles with 8 Iwo Jima hills (2:00 powerful up a 2% incline; 90-100 second jog; 40 second downhill stride; 60 seconds jog to bottom.  Followed with injury prevention work.  Foam rolling at night.