What ever it takes!

Big workout today, I was really nervous about it all day yesterday and really tried to relax and eat better.   Took, 2 naps yesterday 1 before church and 1 after, tried to do stretches all throughout the day and ate pretty good, but we got invited over to some neighbors for desert last night which was counter productive, I just had a small piece of desert pizza.  mmmm!!

Woke up to early again and decided to just go get it over with, wore my fast shoes today, I forgot how comfortable they are.   5 mile brisk warm up 5 mile hard LT tempo (5:40 goal pace), 2 mile cool down.   I was surprised how easy I got into stride in the tempo, felt pretty relaxed to start, started bumping it up a little bit, around mile 2.5 I found a nice breathing rhythm and held on pretty good.  At the 3.75 mark I started to feel things come undone a bit, legs were shaking and my form was falling apart, I also felt a slight pain in my left knee, not bad enough to stop me but worried me a bit.  At the 4 mile mark I was torn between slowing down or speeding up.  I wanted to take it back down to 5:40 pace but Sasha's comment about my neural drive problem popped into my head and I decided to push that last mile hard.  Did my last 1/4 mile at 5:24 pace.

Was really happy when it was done, got a quick drink and finished with a 2 mile cool down then I stretched and rolled out a bit and hit the hot tub.

Distance	Time	Avg Pace		Avg HR	Max HR
1	6:16	6:16		151	172
2	12:30	6:14		154	156
3	18:41	6:11		156	158
4	24:59	6:18		155	157
5	31:16	6:17		158	160
6	37:02	5:46		165	167
7	42:44	5:42		167	169
8	48:22	5:38		169	170
9	53:59	5:37		170	171
10	59:27	5:28		171	173
11	1:06:02	6:35		151	156
12	1:12:33	6:31		153	155
Total Tempo	28:11	5:38		168	173
Total	1:12:38	6:02		160	174

 

Todays run was a bit of a wreck, was going to run 15 miles,  didn't happen, was going to do a hill simulation, didn't happen.  A combination of still being sore from yesterdays tempo run, a terrible day of taking clients out to lunch and a late dinner and eating a ridiculous amount of really bad food, and being very depressed to find out that I probably can't run Ogden Marathon now due to work conflict.

I really enjoy my job, and for the most part think it actually enables me to run, but it is not at all conducive to  running marathons.  Seeing that you need to be able to plan out at least 6 months in advance for a marathon, and sometimes I don't find out my work schedule until 2 weeks before something happens, it really creates a problem and I don't know what to do about it.  I've been visualizing the Ogden course on my runs for 3 months now, so this morning not having any thing to visualize it was really quite... lame. After about 7 miles I kind of found a groove, but by then I was tired.

Distance	Time	Avg Pace	Incline	Avg HR	Max HR
1	7:00	7:00		142	173
2	13:54	6:54	1%	145	148
3	20:36	6:40	2%	155	159
4	27:12	6:36		141	157
5	33:51	6:39		149	153
6	40:26	6:35		152	157
7	46:57	6:31		153	158
8	53:23	6:26		154	156
9	59:45	6:22		155	157
10	1:06:15	6:30		154	157
11	1:12:33	6:18		156	158
12	1:18:33	6:00		161	163
Total	1:18:33	6:32		151	163

OK, I've done it.  I've written off Ogden and signed up for UVM yesterday.  Now my training is off 3 weeks I should probably take a week off and then start up again fresh.

12 Mile normal morning progressive run,  I noticed that my HR was about 3-5bpm higher than normal which probably should have made me slow it down a bit, but I didn't,  I just continued to torture my self like I do every day.  :)  It wasn't really that bad, but strange that my HR was high, that was really the only thing out of the ordinary.

Distance	Time	Avg Pace		Avg HR	Max HR
1	7:00	7:00		151	175
2	13:46	6:46		141	145
3	20:25	6:39		147	162
4	26:56	6:31		157	171
5	33:18	6:22		156	165
6	39:36	6:18		157	161
7	45:50	6:14		159	161
8	52:00	6:10		161	162
9	58:06	6:06		162	163
10	1:04:30	6:24		155	162
11	1:10:52	6:22		156	158
12	1:17:04	6:12		156	158
Total	1:17:09	6:25		155	163

Running just wasn't doing it for me this morning, I'm sure it has something to do with Snowboarding for the first time in 5 years yesterday.

Set out to run 12, figured I'd be doing well to go 10, really wanted to quit at 6, forced myself to go 8.

10 laps in the pool to relax.

Distance	Time	Avg Pace		Avg HR	Max HR
1	6:27	6:27		139	156
2	12:47	6:20		153	157
3	18:59	6:12		157	160
4	25:37	6:38		155	158
5	31:59	6:22		155	156
6	38:38	6:39		154	158
7	45:09	6:31		156	157
8	51:10	6:01		161	168
Total	51:15	6:23		154	168

Looked at my calender and it looks like I will be working the next 20 days straight, no days off, 2 different jobs.  Fun Fun.  Since I have a busy work day tomorrow I convinced Ryan to do our Saturday run this morning.  We went out very fast for some reason, kept going fast even when we kept telling each other we were going to fast.  At mile 14 we hit the JRT and it was much better suited for ice skates than running shoes which slowed us down a lot.  Still 6:32 avg for the whole run.  I was very happy to see that my treadmill times somewhat equate to road times.  I've been on the treadmill so much lately I was afraid it was making me over confident.  I can still average a faster pace on a treadmill, but if the road were perfectly flat with no wind I'm sure it would be close.

 

Distance	Time	Avg Pace		Avg HR	Max HR
1	6:35	6:35		155
2	12:59	6:24		157
3	19:12	6:13		162
4	25:16	6:04		166
5	31:31	6:15		159
6	37:50	6:19		162
7	44:22	6:32		162
8	50:52	6:31		160
9	57:24	6:32		161
10	1:04:05	6:41		161
11	1:10:30	6:25		161
12	1:16:54	6:24		162
13	1:23:31	6:37		152
14	1:30:21	6:50		157
15	1:37:12	6:51		159
16	1:44:04	6:52		159
17	1:50:56	6:52		160
18	1:57:40	6:44		162
Total	1:57:40	6:32		160	169

I'm amazed how well my body is responding to my training this year, last year an 18 mile run would have put me down for at least 3 days regardless of the pace, but this morning I woke up feeling completely normal not sore at all from yesterdays hard run.  I started out kind of slow expecting to hurt but it never did so I did my normal progression run.  The last 4 miles I did a declined sub 6:00 tempo run for no other reason than I think its fun to run fast. 

Distance	Time	Avg Pace	Incline	Avg HR	Max HR
1	6:56	6:56		152	187
2	13:37	6:42		144	147
3	20:07	6:30		149	152
4	26:33	6:26		152	154
5	32:55	6:22		154	156
6	39:13	6:18		156	158
7	45:31	6:18		157	159
8	51:38	6:07		159	160
9	57:57	5:49	-1%	159	162
10	1:03:52	5:55	-0.5%	154	162
11	1:09:44	5:52	-0.5%	161	162
12	1:15:26	5:42	-1%	161	163
Total	1:15:26	6:15		155	163