Today's run went surprisingly well. I was still a bit sour from Sundays 22miles, and had a hard time getting myself out of bed, so I was sure that I was in trouble. Not to mention my Gigantic blisters. However after the first half mile or so, my legs loosened up and I relaxed, and before I knew it I was on my way back home. I managed to keep my pace pretty regular, and finished a bit ahead of planned. I hardly even heard a pip form my blisters, this gives me hope that they will not be a long term issue.
Evan my Nike+ seamed to approve, coming in only .03 of a mile off.
Of blisters & Ice water (Detorit 07, Week 8 Day 4)
Long 22Miles @ 8:52 Planned: 22Miles @ 8:55 Weight: 193.5
Today's long run, was the longest I have done since LA. I defiantly hit the wall, but I did it with some grace. Over all the run went well, though I did have some unfortunate adventures along the way.
As always I started off a bit faster then I should have, and all was going well, I started out around 7:30 am, and it was only 55f, but the humidity was a lovely 96%. Around 5 miles in I noticed that I was feeling some irritation on the inside of my right insole. I stopped of a moment or two to check for in my socks, but all was clear as I could tell. I ran another 400m or so and decided to check again. But still nothing in my socks. I realized that I was not wearing my fancy running socks, but some older new balance socks. I decided to just push on and hope the irritation went away.
Beside the socks, the first 14 mile went very well. At mile 12 I started down a trail that I had never been on. It was quite a nice, relatively flat, with a gravel, and dirt surface. Mostly through wetlands, and woods. At Mile 14miles I made a quick stop to have drink and do some GU. But got back on the track quickly. Around 16 miles in I hit the wall, but managed to keep it from stopping me in my tracks. At mile 17 I walked some 400m, and again at mile 19, and 21. After each brake, save the last my pace dropped.
The nice thing was that because I was .3 of a mile ahead around mile 15, I was able to average my goal pace, even with several of the last miles coming in over 9.
I finished my 22miles in the little town of Gregory, and here I made a mistake. I had run out of Gatorade around mile 17, and was quite thirsty by the time I stopped my reached my goal. Only a few hundred feet form a convenience store, I went in a bought a bottle of water. I tried to drink slowly, but despite my best efforts, I managed to make myself quite ill form drinking to much cold water to quickly. By the time my wife picked me up and got me home I was pretty sure I was not going to vomit. But it had been a close one.
The last lesson of the day, was revealed when I took of my shoes, the worst blisters I have ever had. Once of which is easily the size of a small egg. I cleaned them up and bandaged them up, all I can say is I am glad that next week is a recovery week.
Over all I cant complain to much, I however realize that I have along way to go, in the next 8 weeks.
This pace run went fine, though I am starting to think that once again I am being to optimistic with my marathon goal. I do not feel that I should be even remotely tired out by only 4 miles.
Sunday is the first 20+ long run I have done since LA. I am a bit nervous about it. At least it did not rain on me this morning, though with the humidity so high it might as well have.
Today was the first time I have run on the treadmill since the winter. We had some crazy thunder showers last night, and I did not feel like getting covered with mud, so I found myself in the on my treadmill once again.
There are definitely some advantages to a tread mill, it is much easy to stay on pace, since you simple set it, and go. But it is also misleading because you dint have to mentally control your pace, so you don't truly learn what the pace feels like.
My the only down side is that I sweet like a pig, in my rec room, is starting to smell like a gym. I'm not happy about it. There is only so much scented candles can do.
EZ Run: 4miles @ 8:52 Planned: 4miles @ 8:55 Weight: (Forgot to check)
Doing the Run Thru Hell, and the Mellon Run, over the last two weeks really through off my schedule. So I have decided to re-adjust things a bit.
Since this week was supposed to be a recovery week, I have decide to push it to next week. This week I will instead do the runs I was supposed to do last week. I will then do the recovery week runs next week. This will work out well as I will be a DragonCon, and I do not want to have to do any long or difficult runs on a hotel treadmill.
I will continue thing form there, one week behind, until week 12, when I will start my taper runs as originally planned.
PS. The other plan messed up over the last two weeks was my diet. which I have been completely ignoring.
Finish Time: 46.33 Place: 45th over all, 3rd in age group.
Redemption, of a sort, I did not officially decide to do this race until about 4 hours before the race. But I managed to keep my spirits up, and decided to just go for it.
I left work a the early hour of 4:45pm and managed to get home around 5:30, with a quick change and was registered for the race by 6:15, the race itself started at 7:00pm. I kept it simple and did only a half mile or so warm up.
Because of the way the week had been going I tried to keep my goals pretty realistic. Last November I did a 47:11, and was very happy, with that at the time. I thought it was pretty safe to hope to do 47:07 (7:35mile), but I told myself I would be OK with 50:00.
My Garmin seamed to have some problems with the hills and trees, and it miss reported the run by .1 of a mile. The problem with this was that I was sure I was not going to make my goal. But as I ran up THE HILL that was the finish, and saw the clock still in the 46's I was quite surprised. In the end I managed to set a new 10k personal record, of 46:33.
I will probably take it easier on Sunday then I have scheduled, but I hope to be back on the official plan next week.
EZ Run: 2miles @ 8:55 Planned: 5miles - 3x1600 @ 7:30 Weight: Forgot to check (don't want to know)
As I mentioned on Tuesday, I missed a day, and was not feeling very good, due to running a race on Saturday, and not sleeping on Monday night.
Since I was planning to run the a 10k race on Friday, I decided to skip my tempo run this week, and make the race my speedwork. This made it much more depressing when I went out planning on doing a easy 4 mile run, and barleymaking it through 2.
I guess I was just more messed up then I thought. I'm going to spend some quality time stretching and hope that I can still make it to the race tomorrow.
Some times life gets complicated, screws up the best of plans. Tuesdays run did not seam to me to be a good idea, since I was still sour from the weekend, and only got One and half hours of sleep.
I was going to make up for it today, Wednesday, but I was sill pretty messed up this morning. So I will try and get back on the roads tomorrow morning. Of course I am still thinking I might try and do the Howell Mellon run on Friday night. But if I don't feel better by tomorrow I think I will just have to sit it out this year .
I was not sure how far I would run today, since I did a unscheduled 10mile race yesterday. But when I woke up this morning I was feeling pretty good, so I decided I would go out and see how it went.
To keep my miles up for this week I only really needed to do 7 miles, but as I began my run I was just about convinced that If I took it easy I could do the 20miles that I had originally planned. About 5 Miles in I was still feeling pretty good, and decided that I would try and do 4x 5miles, with .5mile walk breaks between. I think the walk breaks were to long, because by the time I got to mile 9 I was coming down pretty hard. I walked a bit then, and then ran the last mile of my second repeat.
During my walk after mile 10 I realized I had just drank the last of my Gatorade, and I had 10 miles to go back to the house. The weather had grown warmer, and what I had thought was going to be rain, was just turning into humidity. I started off on my third repeat and only maid it 2 miles before I was ready to call it quites. Luckily I had my phone, and my wife was willing to come pick me up.
Normally a run like this would have been very depressing, but since I had just run a 10 mile, quite Hillie race yesterday, I was quite happy that I was able to do as well as I did. I still worry about my long runs, and feel I need to get to the point were I do not take any breaks, but I have 10 Weeks and 4 or 5 20mile+ runs left before the Marathon. Hopefully giving myself plenty of time to build up more endurance.
The worse thing about this run, was that I paused my Nike+ and never ended the workout. When I docked it It lost my run. I had 14 miles, between the running and the walking, and that is a big dent in my Goals and Challenges. Miles I have know legitimate way to catch up on. This is the second run I have lost in this 16 week program, leaving me almost 21 miles behind were I should be. Quite annoying.
Race: 10miles @ 8:29 Place: 24 of 47, in age group, 457 / 2000-ish over all. Finish Time: 1:24:43
This was my second "Run Thru Hell" Last year I had only been running a few months when I signed up for it, and was very disappointed with my time of 1:39:09. This year I am in much better shape, and have put over 1500 additional miles on, and I can now say I am amazed I survived this race last year.
This race is well know in Michigan, and what it is know for is Hills. I cant say if it is the hilliest run around, but I think it must be. Its not that the hills are so tall, I think the course only varies about 200 or 300 feet, but it is over short distances and often. I went into this race ready for the hills, I thought, but It turns out I was not ready for the hills to stop.
My dream time for this was 1:20. That would be averaging 8 minute miles, and I thought with the hills that might be optimistic. I was kind of right. I knew that the last steep hill was around 6 miles in, and spent all my time making sure I was had energy to make it. The good news is I did it, the bad news is that right around mile 7 I lost my will to live. I don't know if I rally hit the wall, or not, It was just that I had spent so much time worrying about the hills that When they were more or less over I came down from what ever rush was keeping me going.
At mile six I was still averaging sub 8:00 miles. Mile 7 brought me down to 9:00 and mile by mile eight, mostly due to walking some 800m or so I managed to almost hit 11:00. When I saw that I managed to pull my self together and finish in the lower 8's. The good news is because of my strong start I managed to come in just under my official goal time of 1:25. But I sure would have been much happier with the 1:20 that I was so close to getting before mile 7.
The strange thing is, I am sure I could have kept running all of mile 8, It goes to show that I have allot to learn, and most of it is mental. Here is the elevation and pace graph form my gamin, I was amazed how steady I was staying through the big hills. Then you can see me choke.
Tomorrow I am supposed to do 20miles for my Detroit training. My legs feel fine tonight, but I will adjust my plans in the morning should I find myself in to much discomfort.
I decided to do a basic short EZ run today, since since I will be doing a race tomorrow. I might have found it wiser to take the day off, but I wanted to keep my miles as close to the plan as possible.
Of course I will be doing a unscheduled 10 miles tomorrow. Te question is what will I be doing Sunday? I think I will find out when I crawl out of bed Sunday morning.
Today was pretty much the scheduled speedwork. It was quite hard, but that is the point of the speedwork. Once again I was annoyed, by the fact the 3x1600 with 800m jogs, and 1 mile warm up and 1 mile cool down, only adds up to 6.5 miles. But I went ahead and did the extra half mile jog just to keep my mileage numbers on tack.
Since I am planning on doing a race Saturday, I am going to take it EZ tomorrow and just do a 3 miles EZ run. But since I did 4 miles on Tuesday it should all balance out.
Despite my ranting last week, I ended up running in the evening, so of course I ended up running in 96 Degrees and 100% Humidity. So by the end of my run, I looked like I had a bucket of water pored over my head. You know you are sweating when you take a 10 minute shower after you run and continue to sweat fir 10 more minutes after that.
I ran a mile further today then I had planned, because I have decided to move things around quite a bit, I have decided to go ahead do the "Run Thou Hell" on Saturday. Which is a 10 miles run through hills. This however is messing up my schedule. I think i will keep my speedwork the same, but the rest of the week is going to be tweaked as needed.
Sadly I have been badly cheating on my diet, I cant seam to get serous about it, It is hard to worry about 5 or 10 pounds when you get back from a 20 mile run.
This run should really read 18miles @ 8:50 and 2Miles @ 9:30. My main concern with training for the Detroit Marathon is to get my distance endurance up. I hit the wall hard in LA and do not want to ever go through that again. So with this in mind I decided to push this run up to 20 miles.
My only concern with this run was that I once again took a few walk brakes, about 400 or so meters. One at 10miles, One at 14, and one at 18. The first two were to drink some Gatorade and down a "GU". The last was to decide weather I wanted to run two more miles. I decided since my official workout was over to just run the last two at whatever pace felt comfortable. This turned out to be around 9:30. The nice thing was that by the time I averaged everything out I ended up averaging 8:55 over the entire 20 miles, and that is the EZ pace I am supposed to be doing.
After the last few long runs, I was concerned about heat and humidity. I went so far as to by a extra bottle for my "fuel belt", and some GU. I wanted very much to make sure that I was well hydrated. The funny thing was that today It rained on me the entire time, this made the run easier in some way, and harder in other. I was quite covered in mud by the time I got back home. But between the rain and the extra Gatorade I feel that I managed to finish up with out feeling like a dried out husk.
Miracle of Miracles, all went well today. I was quite nervous about any speedwork after my last tempo run, which for some reason was a tortures experience. But Last night I made sure I eat descent meal, and got enough sleep. So this morning I was able to get up at 6am and hit the road with a relatively positive attitude.
I made sure that I warmed up slow, 10:05, and spent a few minutes stretching before I kicked of the 4 miles at speed. This proved to be helpful, maintaining the pace outdoors with slight hills was a bit tough but I managed to keep it going, The run was as it should be "comfortably hard" and I feel quite good and pain free now, so I am not concerned that it was to fast.
One other thing of note accrued, last night I went to ad a book to my Ipod, and it started giving me sync errors. After messing around with it for a bit I decided just to reset it back to the factory defaults . This was fine, though I lost my playlist that I made when I first got it. But I had been listening to the same playlist for a year and 15 days, so I think it was time for a change.
The strange thing is that resetting the ipod killed my Calibration data, so I was sure that today's run would be extremely off, but to my surprise it was incredibly accurate. I think I will leave it as it is for a time and see how long that last.
