This week was 46 miles of running, an hour of hiking, and 2000 yards of swimming -- training log is here.
I had twin goals this week (well...every week) of improving my fitness while also working on my weaknesses. One of those weaknesses is downhill running, and I haven't done much of that at all the last few months. So, I did my Wednesday easy run in an area with some very steep hills (8-12% grade) on the theory that it would make less steep downhills easier. I'm not sure how valid that theory is, but it seemed worth a try. The downsides of doing this were a) it was impossible to hold a steady low heartrate, since I was either carefully shuffling my way down or working fairly hard to run up; and b) it was a lot more stress on my body than a normal easy run. So I may table this plan or limit it to a mile or two in the middle of an easy run.
For fitness, I had planned on Tuesday and Friday workouts, and then a Sunday long run. However, it's now late enough in the year that the sun doesn't rise until about 10 minutes after the workout has started. On Tuesday, it's apparent from my splits when the sun rose....
On Friday, I made the mistake of trying to run in super shoes for the first time since May at the same time I was trying to warm up in the dark. Basically, super shoes reduce one's ability to feel the ground and the resulting proprioception. And my proprioception is lousy to begin with, meaning that I'm very dependent on my eyesight to know where the ground is. And of course, I couldn't see well in the dark. Even after switching back to normal shoes my balance was just completely off, so I pushed the tempo back to Saturday.
On Saturday I did the tempo in super shoes and also in daylight, and it was hard but doable. The tempo even was a bit faster than last week's workouts would predict (Saturday's split for a continuous 4800m was faster than the sum of last week's 3200+1600). One could say that it was because I was wearing super shoes, but right now I honestly think the super shoes slow me down. (They'll help me more once I get used to running in them again).
Since I planned to take Sunday as my easy non-running day, I did a long cool down on Saturday to get to 12 miles. 12 miles used to be my normal mileage for a workout day, so it was odd to have it feel like a long run on Saturday. But hopefully I'll get back to that level of fitness.
Next week I'll try for an interval workout, a tempo, and a long run. I'll do the interval workout with the team in normal shoes (since it starts in the dark) and the tempo by myself in super shoes after the sun rises.
Monday: 6 miles (9:47) and streaming yoga. Foam rolling in evening.
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