Street Sweepers

My legs felt dead all day yesterday, I wasn't sure how I was going to pull off an 8k run this morning. I had thoughts about pushing back to lunchtime or after work, but the schedule just wasn't going to work for either of those. The next two weeks are the last hard weeks I have before race day, and I don't want to mess them up.

So I dragged myself out of bed. The temperature was around 1 degree C, but the wind chill was lower, and on one section it was really blowing. I trudged down the road at about a 7 min/km pace. I felt very sluggish but I was moving. On the road heading north two street sweepers passed by in my lane about a minute apart - I usually trust cars to give me space (especially in the morning) but something about street sweepers gives me the creeps. Go figure.

I did settle into a decent pace after a couple km, but it was a slower pace than normal. No pain in either achilles during the run today - I'm hoping the difference isn't that I was wearing my old Nike's today. I'm planning to start Thursday's run with 6 km at the same pace, this should give me a good comparison between the shoes.

19 km

I ran 19 km late this afternoon. It was supposed to be this morning, but the bug that I've been fighting off this week continues to be a bit disruptive. It was about 5:00 when I was finally able to hit the road.

I was supposed to run 18 today. This wasn't one of those 'I felt good so I went another km' deals. This was a mapmyrun.com sucks situation. Mapmyrun.com shows a road in Richmond that crosses from Huntley to Shea Road. So as I ran down Huntley I was looking, and looking, and looking, and the realized I'd definitely gone too far, and I turned onto the next street. I worked my way through a neighborhood and eventually found my way to Shea, after going about an extra km. Note that google maps does not make the same mistake as mapmyrun, so in the future I'll stick with the far superior gmaps pedometer for route planning.

I did the run at a 5:55 per km pace. My right achilles was a bit sore around 12-13 km, and again a bit later, but it did ease up again along the way. All in all it went pretty well, but I'm spectacularly tired now.

Cough

Woke up with a cold this morning. I knew I was getting sick yesterday, so I decided not to do my morning 8k. But since today was scheduled to be the last run of an easy week I wanted to get it in, so I went out after work. The pace was ok, and I was glad to get the run in. I have a couple of days off now before going long on Sunday, I think I should be back at 100% by then.

49.1 km

I ran 5 k easy yesterday, and 2 k really slow today. That put my weekly running total at 49.1 km (30.4 miles). I'm including the two 2k runs done with a 6 year old at about 8 min/km in that total.

Right now everything feels pretty good, and next week is my monthly easy week.

Tempo plus Pace

Tempo day yesterday. As usual, the tempo run was a hard workout. I did 3 km easy, followed by 5 km at around a 5:10/km tempo pace. The tempo part was a real struggle, it was an out and back and the first half had a slight climb and headwind. The second half should have been easier, but I was thrashed from the earlier part. I did about 3 km on the way back at a 5:25/km pace to get a feeling for whether I could run that pace when I'm tired. I actually wanted to do 5:40 on the last 3, but just can't seem to get myself to that pace. The total run was a bit over 12 km.

It finally warmed up here, 21 degrees C yesterday! I was able to do my first run of the year in shorts and a t-shirt.

I'm scheduled for 5 km easy today, which I can hopefully do after work before big-time carbo-loading.

Up Early Again

This morning's run totally reminded me of my previous experiences with early morning running. It was all I could do to drag myself out of bed, get out the door, and stagger down the road. I just hope it was early enough that none of the neighbors saw me starting off, since it definitely wasn't pretty.

I did run 9.6 km, and after about 3 km I got into a decent comfortable rhythm. Today was supposed to be run at an easy pace, and there was pretty much no chance of running at anything faster than that.

No pain in either Achilles today. I did have a bit of a sore quad and tightness in my calf muscles, but that was probably just leftover from Sunday's run.

Another record

I set an impressive new personal best today: Most Gu’s consumed on a run (2). Once again, Gu good, Sportsbeans bad.

It was the longest run I’ve ever done in distance as well, 18 km. The run took an hour and 50 minutes, and I’m still feeling pretty tired. I was pretty focused on trying to keep my heart rate down today, to make sure I wasn’t pushing too hard. I was aiming for around 140, but making sure it was under 150 the whole time. On my 16 k run a couple of weeks back my heart rate was averaging 152 over most of the run, today it was at 141 until the last few km.

Today was the first time I've felt really comfortable in my Mizunos for a full run, so maybe I've finally got them broken in properly.

I don't like Sportsbeans

Today was my weekly “faster than easy” pace run. Today I did 11.5 km after work, with 7 km of it at 5:28/km. That’s around the pace I’d like to be able to do the half in. It went pretty well, but I’m not convinced I can hold that pace for the full race. I guess the good news is I’m not convinced that it’s impossible either.

I tried sports beans on today’s run. Conclusion: I don’t like sports beans. I can’t run that pace and chew beans at the same time, I just felt tired and out of synch every time I popped a bean. I wound up saving about half the beans till the pace part of the run was done.

My right ankle was a bit sore today, but didn’t seem to be particularly bothered by the run.

Up with the roosters

Early morning running has really never agreed with me. Yes, we could debate whether my definition qualifies as early, but whatever. When I've done this in the past, I've always felt very sluggish (but also pretty heroic for being out there so early). As much as I enjoy my lunchtime runs, their length has turned into a problem. At this point my typical mid-week run lasts anywhere from 50 minutes to upwards of an hour. The reality is I'm away from my desk for the run duration plus an extra 25 minutes, and then land at my desk not having eaten lunch. My mid week runs are going to have to migrate to either early morning or after work.

I decided to try my easy day before work, I set the alarm for 6:05, only snoozed once, and actually managed to get myself out of the house around 6:25. I made an effort to go really slowly, but did get into a pretty typical rhythm after about a km. I went for 9 km, in 54 minutes. It wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible either. I had to rush a bit to stay close to schedule, but was at work just about 15 minutes later than normal (thanks for making my lunch sweetie!). I'm not sure if I could do a tempo day in the morning and survive the workday, but this seems ok for the easy runs.

Another long run

The schedule today said to do a 10 km long run, but it was a ‘flexible’ 10. My intention was to back off to 8 k if I was feeling sluggish, or go a bit longer if things felt good. The weather was perfectly sunny, and about 5 degrees C.

I wound up running out to the site of the ‘historic’ Mansfield Township. I didn’t realize that there was such a place until I came to a weather-beaten sign indicating that I was passing it. The sign said a lot more than that, but I didn’t stop to finish. In any event, this sign was on one of the most perfect running roads I’ve ever found. It goes through farmland , which is always a plus, since there is almost no traffic. But unlike most other farm roads in the area, this road is paved. I was passed by about one car every 5 minutes, and almost all of them moved far enough over that I didn’t need to break stride.

I went a total of 14 km today, at an average pace of 6:00/km. I didn’t feel like I was working nearly as hard as I was a week ago.

Wet Recovery Run

I really don't run at my recovery pace much. The training plan I put together has been along the lines of quality not quantity, with three runs/week most weeks. But I did put in a 4th run for a few weeks, to bump my weekly mileage up closer to the range where most half training plans say it should be.

Which brings me to today's recovery run. I was quite tired after yesterday, and today's forecast wasn't offering any encouragement. As I was lounging in the hot tub around 11 last night I actually decided my best bet was to get up and run in the morning, before the rain started, so I set my alarm early. Right. Then I thought maybe I'd skip it for the day, quality not quantity, right?

At lunchtime I decided I might as well go. It looked like snow when I decided to go, but by the time I got out there it was rain mixed with snow, with the temperature right at the freezing mark. I did a very slow 5k at my recovery pace. As expected, my legs were still sore from yesterday.

This was the longest week I've had since I returned to running. I ran 38.5 km this week, with a total time spent running of 3 hours, 49 minutes, 56 seconds.

Hard Tempo

I did 10k today at lunchtime. It was a tempo day, so I did 30 minutes at my tempo pace of around 5:15/km. That was a seriously tiring workout. I was hungry at the start, which didn't help matters. About 3km into the tempo part I was really feeling it, but after a couple of minutes of wondering if 30 min at tempo pace was too much, my energy level rebounded. I did add 4 strides to the end of my workout during the cooldown part of my run.

I was actually going to do 1 km cruise intervals instead of the constant tempo pace, but once I got going I remembered why I hate intervals. I was constantly looking at my Garmin to see when my first 1 km lap was up. At around 900 m it dawned on me that if I did the workout I was planning I could look forward to 30 minutes of staring at my watch. Also, I had a hard time with the early pace, and was running most of the 1st km way too fast (around 4:45/km). So, I went back to the 30 min tempo run.

Rainy Day

I did a 7 km run today at lunchtime, in the rain. I did it today at a 6:01/km pace, once again faster than intended. Today I had an excuse though, since I knew I was late for something. Part of me thought I should stick the the 6:15 pace I wanted to be running, since the something I was late for was called at the last minute over lunchtime. The other part thought I should just pick up the pace. My legs were a bit heavy, and my left quad was a bit stiff - but really it wasn't bad. Even the rain wasn't too hard, and it did seem to convince the cars to be more polite than normal.

Saw an interesting article in RW last night on things to eat while running. I'm tossing in the link here so I can find it later.

RW Foods for Energy