Thursday, July 28, 2011

Week in Review: July 18-July 24

Great week in training this past week.  Toward the end I was fatigued enough to mail in my last run and just struggle through it, and I think I’m doing precisely the right thing by taking a recovery week after 2 consecutive challenging weeks.

Things of note: 
  • My dad was here.  That was particularly cool.  He came down to visit Deneb and me and Nataly and Jackson and see the digs.  I think he came away pleasantly surprised.  It’s too bad he was here for such a short time, we didn’t get to do too much while he was here.
  • I did my first one way run to Cuevas. I’ll write up a separate post about that one, it’s more than deserving, but Bermejo to Cuevas is likely to make regular appearances on my training routes.  Take a trufi to Bermejo and get out, have the driver deliver my bags to Cuevas…
  • Wind really messes with me on my interval sessions.  Hard to get a real read on the effort/pacing when the interval is done with a headwind or tailwind.  Had me thinking about the consequences on my run yesterday.  The problem is non-linear.  I expect I’ll write a whole post about that one too…
  • Finally, I took an unscheduled day off.  I’ve got some crud in my chest.  Not sure what it is, but every morning for going on 10 days, I hack up a good chunk of lung.  The only other symptom is a little sinus congestion.  The day I took off was rainy and cool.  Without the rain/cool/crud trifecta, I’d’ve run, but…
Here’s the chart:
image
Click for more gory detail…
Monday: Recovery run.  Standard loop easy Zone 1 effort.
 
Distance: 4.33 miles; Time: 43m14s
Average Heart Rate: 134 bpm; Average Pace: 9:59/mile
Max Heart Rate: 144 bpm.

Tuesday: Form work. Again I went with more of a focus on my cadence.  I really feel that that is helping me with my achilles ache.

Distance: 7.55 miles; Time: 1h1m1s
Average Heart Rate: 152 bpm; Average Pace: 8:05/mile
Max Heart Rate: 176 bpm.

Wednesday: 5x9 minute Zone 4 Cruise Intervals. Brutally challenging workout.  Part of it was mental-I was disappointed by the speed at which I was conducting my intervals.  The other part was environ-mental.  The wind was cranking.  I’m getting tired of always running with a head or tail wind. 

As I write this, there’s a steady 30 mph wind blowing from the North with gusts to 40.  You can imagine I’m stoked to get out and run in that.  It seems to be blowing like that all the time.  My typical route is also mostly N/S so I’m forced to run home into a headwind.

Anyway, Wednesday’s interval session was better than the previous one with intervals conducted at 6:57/mile, 8:08/mile, 7:24/mile, 8:11/mile, and 8:21/mile.  3 of those were run into the wind – guess which ones…

Distance: 11.87 miles; Time: 1h,42m,33s
Average Heart Rate: 165bpm; Average Pace: 8:38/mile
Max Heart Rate: 184bpm.

Thursday: Unscheduled day off.  As noted in the preamble, I had chunks of stuff flying out of my lungs and was further challenged by rain and cool.  Opted to hang out with the parental unit.

Friday: Endurance. Two things about this run.  One, I was fast and two, this run featured Cujo.  The dogs here can be truly obnoxious.  I may get strange looks from the people whose paths I cross, but the dogs think I stole something.  Fully 25% of them are not to be trusted.  I thought for sure I’d get bitten by the one that went after me.  There’s even a big spike in my HR when the dude went after me.  Adrenaline.

Distance: 10.22 miles; Time: 1h, 18m, 35s
Average Heart Rate: 158 bpm; Average Pace: 7:41/mile
Max Heart Rate: 176 bpm (dog).

Saturday: Running Strength?  Not sure where to file this run.  I ran one way from Bermejo to Cuevas which involves essentially 15 kilometers of gradual climbing followed by another 6 straight down.  If you look at the chart, I spent a good chunk of time in HR Zone 3.  Really a good “Tempo” climb.  I’ll put up a detailed post on this one tomorrow.

Distance: 12.84 miles; Time: 1h,56m,15s
Average Heart Rate: 160 bpm; Average Pace: 9:03/mile
Max Heart Rate: 173 bpm.

Sunday: Running strength and Endurance Two-a-day. Sunday’s workout was complicated by the fact that we were in Cuevas in the morning and had to be in Santa Cruz at Noon (a 2+hour drive).  I had a 3 hour endurance run scheduled, but there was no way to log all of those hours at once.  I split them up.

In the AM, I ran 6 laps of the trails (from the cabin we stay in to the 3rd waterfall and back) at Cuevas which meant I picked up another 2000 feet of climbing on the weekend.  Additionally, the nature of my course made it difficult to settle into a groove so I just focused on steady overall effort and didn’t worry too much about the HR monitor.

Distance: 6.77 miles; Time: 1h,14m,36s
Average Heart Rate: 148bpm; Average Pace: 11:01/mile
Max Heart Rate: 163 bpm.

In the PM, I set out thinking I’d cruise through a half marathon.  Set a PR in training on a day when I was just taking an easy endurance effort.

My run started pretty well, but by about mile 4.5, my stomach was complaining about all of the meat in it – we made it to Santa Cruz a little late, but in time for the bar-b-que.  At mile 5.3, I paused to see if any of the ‘que wanted to come back up, but alas it was not to be.  By the time I hit the lap button at mile 6.55, I was starting to doubt my sanity and finally at mile 7 I mailed it in and just ticked off the minutes until I could say I had a decent week temporally.

Distance: 12.01 miles; Time: 1h,44m,43s
Average Heart Rate: 147bpm; Average Pace: 8:43/mile
Max Heart Rate: 160 bpm.

In total, this week saw me cover 65.6 miles with my feet and get some pretty solid training in to boot. 
Thanks for reading, and be sure to chew your food well.
J

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