Western States Training: Week 8

…And then we rest.   I strongly believe that resting and recovering is just as important as hard training.  My mantra the past few years has been, “rest hard in order to train harder.”  Its taken me decades to beat this into my head.  Like many endurance athletes I love the feeling of running until my legs are toast…which is fun, well…type II fun.   If you’re reading this you are probably a big proponent of type II fun 😉

Week 8 would be another long week of work, but a nice easy week of running.  Still the same mileage, just no workouts, lots of sleep, foam rolling and good food.

I’m also reading two books dealing with the psychological side of endurance sports as well.  I couldn’t decide which one to start with, so I am reading both at the same time.  The Brave Athlete; Calm the F*ck Down, and Endure.   My favorite exercise thus far is from the Brave Athlete.   The exercise suggests that many athletes show up to the starting line less than confident, and one way to show up ready to rock is to imagine yourself as a “superhero” alter-ego.   Now I have a race, and hard workout alter-ego with a “backstory” and she has quotes.  So when I start to feel like an imposter, or my confidence waivers I have my super hero alter-ego who can step in.

Week 8:

• Monday: my husband had the day off so we ran together, easy road loop. PM yoga
• Tuesday: 8 easy trail miles
• Wednesday: another easy 5 on the trails
• Thursday: 8 trail miles with Erin
• Friday: new to me trail exploring. Sometimes it’s nice just to take a map and run around a new place with no goal other than enjoying the sights of the trail and the sun on your face.
• Met up with some faster friends. Ran 22 miles with 18-30 second pickups after a warm up. That was fun, actually. Took away some of the monotony of doing the same loops over and over. Lifted
• 5 easy miles with Drew and the dog.

 

 

Western States Training: Catch-up on weeks 6 & 7

Oops, time sort of slipped away from me and I missed updating week 6 so I’m adding it in  with week 7.  Again, I’m writing this as a record for myself to look back on, and also as a way to share with you all, so many of the weeks are similar in structure.

Running downhill at South Mountain State Park

 

The 6th week of training started off pretty great.  The Tuesday workout was pretty typical, overall average pace of 7:50, but the Thursday workout I had a little mental breakthrough.  Running as hard as you can up a hill for 3 minutes hurts. I can get just under a half a mile uphill and on Thursday I was bumping up the number of repeats as well as having a busy week at work and pushing hard and knowing the pain is coming can be almost as much mental as it is physical.  Letting up on the gas is tempting, but at the same time I want each workout to be at least the same overall pace as the previous ones, if not faster.  The workouts are always the same distance in the end, but the speed in the middle gets longer, as the cool down at the end gets shorter. That Thursday I decided that I was just going to be in the moment, not think about the added repeats and how much more they were going to hurt and just run…and I had a much better workout.  My pace dropped to a 7:41 and I ended up with more repeats, and also an extra half mile at the end because I ran my usual cool down loop, forgetting I had added a mile to the hill repeats.  Obviously I should be getting fitter, but that jump was in no way all physical, and probably mostly mental.

That Saturday at the end of the week was also pretty good, it does seem that the pain I experience during the Tuesday and Thursday workouts translates over to my long runs.  Its like once you start to get used the acute fatigue of all out hill repeats, a long run doesn’t feel quite as hard.  I finished the last 5 miles of the long run faster than the previous 15.

Unfortunately I got a 48 hour something and stayed in bed from Saturday night until Monday morning.

Anyway the week looked like this

• Monday Hour of Trail miles, PM yoga
• Tuesday 3×3 hill repeats for a total of 8 miles followed by lifting; core and rotational mobility too
• Wednesday 8 trail miles
• Thursday 8.5 miles of 3×4 hill repeats, followed by lifting: core and rotational mobility
• Friday, easy hour with friends
• Saturday long run with last 5 miles faster
• Sunday sick all day

Bleeding into

• Monday sick all day
• Tuesday, backing off of repeats to 3×3 while I recover from the virus; easy lift, more mobility
• Wednesday 8 trail miles
• Thursday 5×3 for 8 miles; lift
• Friday hour easy run with friends while planning weekend miles
• Saturday long run in South Mountains State park: 20 miles 4,5000 feet. Run comfortable, unless its a runnable downhill and then run it hard (don’t run the steep and terribly technical sections hard, not worth risking an ankle or leg injury) Finish with a 2 mile hike straight up a waterfall 🙂
• Sunday, easy road miles with Drew and the dog.

So the take away from this two week block is to be more mindful of being present while running hill repeats.  The benefit of the workout isn’t just the pounding of the legs, or the burning of the lungs…its also training the mind and body to really get close to that edge of suffering, and realizing that its ok. (if you subscribe to the central governor theory, then your brain will cut you off long before you actually do any real damage to yourself by running hard.) I do think when left to my own devices I omit these types of workouts and opt for long slower slogs.  That seems to be the type of pain I enjoy, however, the short, intense training bouts is really what I have been missing.

Waterfalls and laughter with friends

 

Hope you all had a good few weeks of training!

Western States: Week 5

Just trying to find a little balance this week.

This week I was back to hill workouts.   After a week of rest, I was feeling fresh and ready to get back to training at the start of the week.  However, I picked up 7 more work hours(time on feet) so by the end of the week I was pretty worn out.  I also think because usually after my workouts I have an hour or two before getting back to any work, I am very good about refueling, but this Tuesday after my lunch run/lift I neglected to prepare for refueling properly, and the next few days my runs suffered.  (noted, and week 6 I am going into it with plenty of pre prepared foods and easy crock pot meals that will be ready for me to eat.)

My weeks have turned into a back and forth of early morning runs, and mid day lunch runs.  My body is getting into the habit of early-pop-out-of-bed wake ups, followed by leisurely morning wake ups every other day.  I’m hoping that if I take my time and stretch and eat and do some mobility my body will feel better on my vo2 max days.

• Monday: Easy 5 trail miles
• Tuesday: Vo2 max workout 4×3 minute hill repeats.  Tuesdays I had a lot of work as well as this workout, so I ate a big breakfast, did some mobility and then a few hours of work.  I took my lunch break and did my workout and felt amazing! Strava data can be found https://www.strava.com/activities/1383445372/embed/1ba0a9513e78a997dab97f8cf3763eb01aa1d9f5” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>here, It is a hill workout, not sure why my Suunto didn’t pick up the hill.  The hill data can be found https://www.strava.com/activities/1360480160/embed/c97b0dae708ea0a7df47432cf1f8f1b96e280bf4” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>here  from a previous workout.  Unfortunately I went right back to work after only having a very small snack.  By the time I got home at 6 pm I was too tired to make a good meal, and think that the next two days were a result of this silly mistake.
• Wednesday: Easy-sleepy hour shake out run on trails
• Thursday: Another lunchtime vo2 workout, but this time my legs were FLAT.  The second I started the first repeat I could tell my body wasn’t recovered.  Do you ever have that feeling of “hollow” legs, like there is no energy in them to contract your muscles.  I tried pushing harder, pumping my arms more, getting my legs to turn over faster…blah.  I just couldn’t move fast enough to get my HR up.  It was frustrating at first, but not every workout can be perfect or faster than the one previous, so as I made my way back to my car I looked back on what I ate and realized my Tuesday mistake.  DON’T FORGET TO EAT ENOUGH POST RUN!
• Friday: Another easy hour.
• Saturday: I joined a friend for 15 or so miles, we sort of mindlessly ran around our local trails.  The day was cold, and not really warming up, so after he left I decided to pick up the pace for my last few miles–I was ready to get home and warm up, so I completed the run on non technical trail and dropped my pace closer to a tempo pace to finish up. After I went to the gym and did some strength work.
• Sunday: Family run day!  We opted to run an hour on the roads.  The steady rain had flooded all the trails, so we just did a slow recovery pace on roads close to home.

 

Also, Lily Trotters, the women’s compression socks I wear, shared one of my Balanced Movement workouts.  This one I do in the weeks leading up to events.  Its not for strength, its for muscle memory and foot quickness.  Its here.