6 miles with strides

6 recovery miles with 6 strides on the schedule. I had wanted to do in the morning, but it snowed a bit last night and with the temperature hovering around freezing so I waited till after work. I usually do strides after a run but being a little pressed for time I ended up doing them during the run. These strides were much easier than the ones I did last weekend.

Plan calls for 12 miles tomorrow which I'm going to have to do after work again and then there's 11 miles with 6@LT on Friday. Saturday has a recovery run and Sunday is a 20 miler.

5 weeks down, 11 to go

Saturday: 7 miles including 8 strides. I haven't done strides probably since last November and it really showed. I felt very awkward doing them and felt like I was going to trip over my feet.

Sunday:18 miles. Sidewalks were fairly clear but there's still some ice on the ground. It was just below freezing which was relatively warm. Overall, I averaged about an 8:30 pace trying to keep the HR at the high end for my long runs. The ankle and IT band held up okay during the run, though they were quite sore afterwards and I was kinda limping around for the rest of the day. This was a 50 mile week. Yikes! This week calls for 54 miles including a 20 mile long run.

Lap	Lap Time		Lap	Lap Time
1	08:58.00		10	08:24.40
2	08:59.10		11	08:27.90
3	08:56.10		12	08:13.00
4	08:40.20		13	08:19.50
5	08:20.70		14	08:22.70
6	08:42.70		15	08:19.60
7	08:33.40		16	08:09.80
8	08:20.40		17	08:24.00
9	08:23.60		18	08:26.40

Damn snow.

Did 4 miles recovery run on Wednesday.
Did 11 miles today. Splits for today were:

Lap Lap Time
1 0:09:30
2 0:08:49
3 0:08:44
4 0:09:00
5 0:16:52
6 0:08:45
7 0:08:51
8 0:09:02
9 0:09:00
10 0:09:18
Lap 5 was actually 2 miles.

Temperature has been warm as of late, but hovering around freezing. It gets just warm enough during the day to start melting the snow, but it gets just cold enough at night to refreeze the melted water. This morning was just below freezing which caused the sidewalks to be covered with ice which isn't too bad if I can see the ice and can know where I have to tread lightly. Unfortunately about half way through the run, it started to snow resulting in a slight dusting of snow which covered up the ice patches. I ended up wiping out at mile 9 or 10 while making a turn and scraped my knee a bit. My knee isn't hurting, but I think I may have tweaked my ankle since it's a bit sore now.

Tempo Tuesday

10 miles this morning with 5 @ LT pace.

07:06.40

07:17.60

07:20.20

07:19.90

07:13.40

Warmed up for about 15 minutes and then started into it. It was just above freezing this morning and nice. The forecast was predicting rain for the morning and I was afraid that the shopping mall parking lot would have ice on it, but it was fine. Wore two thin long sleeve shirts and didn't have to wear my winter shell. I'd done the last two LT runs on the treadmill with progressively increasing the pace by .1 mi/hr each week. I'd hope to continue the trend by doing the LT portion at a 7:10 pace but the transition to running outside again was a bit tougher than I thought.

The last time I did this was when it was super hot where my paces were much slower and I had to stop part way through the run, so it's hard to say if I'm ahead of where I was last summer. I suspect I am but probably won't know for sure until my LT run next week.

12 mile long run

Did 12 miles outside this morning. Had to slow down in places as there's still snow on some of the sidewalks. It was a nice sun shiny day, but cold at about -10C. Not much wind, but there were a few places where it was blowing hard.

Lap	Lap Time		Lap	Lap Time
1	09:20.20		7	09:24.60
2	09:09.40		8	08:50.70
3	09:21.60		9	08:57.10
4	09:27.40		10	08:57.70
5	09:17.50		11	09:05.80
6	09:04.50		12	08:39.60

Pfitz has a 50 mile week planned for next week as follows:
Tuesday: 10 miles with 5 @ LT
Wednesday: 4 mile recovery
Thursday: 11 miles
Saturday: 7 miles including 8 strides
Sunday: 18 mile long run.

It supposed to warm up a bit next week with above freezing temperatures predicted for next Sunday. Hopefully there won't be too much slush around for the long run.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Training Review

Did 4 miles of recovery outside today. It kinda warmed up a bit today, still below freezing. The cold doesn't bother me that much and the wind I can handle if I'm dressed properly. What I can't take however is the trying to run on snow covered side walks which causes me to slow down. I 'm going to try and do 12 miles outside tomorrow, but part of me wants to do it on the treadmill.

So I spent some time reviewing Ryan's blog today to see how his training was going leading up to Chicago last year. He did the same training plan that I'm doing now and had the same goal then as I do now of reaching 3:10. Unfortunately his training paces were WAY faster than what I'm doing now. I'm doing an 8:35 pace for a long run now, whereas Ryan was doing faster than 8:00 min miles at this point of his training. This is causing me to rethink whether it's feasible to try for a BQ this spring as I definitely don't think I can drop down to sub 8:00 long runs during the next 12 weeks of training. The one glimmer of hope that I do see is that Ryan ran a 3:30 marathon last spring using training paces that were much faster than what I was doing for my 3:17 marathon in Chicago so maybe I can get away with going slower. It's hard to say. I think I'm going to have to rely on the tune-up races to judge where I'm at.

Oh yeah, I changed my name to something that more closely matches my real name. I never really liked my previous pseudo name. I ended up choosing it cause it matched my blog title which I thought was clever, but I never really got used to it.

More treadmill running

Tuesday: Did 8 miles at the gym. Started at 6.5 mi/hr and increased the speed by .1 after each mile split. I was trying to get a feel for what speed I should be at for my long run pace at a HR of less than 160. 7 miles/hr averaged a HR at just under 160. The plan called for 8 strides as well, but instead I ended up just doing the last .15 miles at 9 miles/hour.

Wednesday: Went back to the gym to do a 5 mile recovery run. Started out at 6,5 miles/hour but slowed down to 6.4 miles for the last two miles.

Thursday: Did 8 miles at the gym again. Started out at 6.5 mi/hr for 1 mile and then bumped it to 6.8 for 3 miles and then again to 7.0 for miles 5 through 8. Just about perfect for HR for the last 4 miles of being just under 160. The little blip at mile 6 is me having to stop the treadmill and restart it since the thing automatically turns off after an hour. 7 mi/hr translates to an 8:35 pace. I'm not sure where this puts me in terms of fitness since I think I was doing my long runs a bit faster than this in the weeks leading up to Chicago, but it could just be the hot temperature in the gym that is causing me to slow down a bit at the same HR.

I developed a trigger point in my left quadricep and it's made running a bit awkward. I noticed it after my Tuesday run and I think it came to the forefront after the very brief sprint at the end. I haven't done any strides at all this training cycle and i think my muscles just rebelled a bit when asked to push the pace. I've been reading a bit about it in this book and noticed that quad trigger points can lead to knee pain which is what I've been experiencing as of late. So I'm hoping that if I can get rid of the trigger points that my knee pain will go away too. Strange enough as it is, but while flipping through channels on Thursday, I noticed the home shopping network was selling an ultrasonic device for getting rid of trigger points. I was seriously considering buying it but don't know if it works. I've been relying on The Stick to get rid of trigger points and I've found it works well.

The temperature supposed to warm up this weekend a bit, so I'm looking forward to heading outside again.

100th post

Did 5 miles recovery run yesterday and did 17 miles today. I had originally planned on going to the gym today as soon as it opened to lay claim to one of the treadmills off to the side in the hopes that no one would notice that I was going to occupy it for two and a half hours. Alas, I slept in and realized my little plan wasn't going to work. I had wanted to go the gym because my knee is still a bit sore and wanted to be able to stop if I needed, plus all this cold weather running is getting to be a bit of a drag.

So when I woke up, the temperature wasn't too bad at about -8C and there wasn't much of a wind so I decided to head outside. To try and avoid the water bottle freezing thing, I ended up doing a 10 mile loop that took me back to my place where I could refill the water bottle with hot water. This seemed to work out well. Additionally my knee didn't give me as much of a problem as I thought it would. Didn't do the shopping mall parking lot thing this time, mostly because it was too late, but I didn't really need to. Though it's been really cold lately, it's also been relatively dry. Almost all of the sidewalks are clear.

Lap	Lap Time	Lap	Lap Time
1	09:12.60	10	08:45.70
2	09:02.80	11	08:30.40
3	09:20.80	12	08:40.50
4	08:58.30	13	08:58.40
5	09:09.60	14	08:57.70
6	08:47.40	15	08:25.90
7	09:05.10	16	06:57.50
8	08:57.50	17	08:51.30
9	09:05.60	Extra	03:36.20

Garmin was a little premature at Mile 16 so I ended up doing a little extra at the end to compensate. I'm guessing that in total I did 17.1 miles. Next week is a recovery week which is good for me since I need the break.

Blogger says this is my 100th post. I don't have anything inspiring or thought provoking to say so I'll let it pass with a whimper.

Treadmill running ain't so bad.

Or so I'm going to keep telling myself.

Yesterday, I did about 10 miles or that's what Garmin says I did. That however includes 2 miles that were done in about 6 minutes each, so unless I blacked out and channeled the spirit of Pheidippides, it was a little less than that. The temperature wasn't that cold, but the wind was really whipping around. About two miles in I really started wishing that I had gone to the gym instead. I have a 5 mile recovery run scheduled for tomorrow and a 17 mile long run on Sunday which I'm dreading. I'm giving real serious thought to doing it at the gym since I don't think I can handle my water bottle freezing again while going the full distance. Thankfully next week is a bit of a recovery week which will allow me to heal up my aches and pains that I've developed these past few weeks.

LOST is back!

So haven't been posting much. There was a small possibility that I would be going to California (Beverly Hills) for a work related thing this week, but that's not happening.

Went to the gym on Tuesday and did 9 miles total with 4 at LT pace at 8.3 miles/hour. I figure I gotta be able to get my LT pace up to about 8.8 miles/hour if I'm going to be able to have a realistic shot at BQing in May. Was supposed to do a 5 mile recovery run today but my left knee has been giving me some problems and is sore. I'm going to try to do 10 miles tomorrow. It's weird, it doesn't feel like I'm marathon training yet, even though I'm now into week three of the plan.

So I'm watching Lost right now which is back after a long hiatus. It's going to be interesting to see how things play out.

Week in review

Wednesday: 5.1 miles recovery
Thursday: 10.2 miles
Saturday: 4 miles recovery
Sunday: 15 miles

I did 15 miles on Sunday and was it ever cold. -15C and -30C with the wind chill. I had bought a face covering thing on Saturday in prep for the long run and it helped a little in keeping my face warm, but I found it quite uncomfortable. Tough to breath through that thing. I had used boiling water to make gatorade in the hopes of holding off the inevitable freezing of my water bottle, but it didn't help much. The nozzle froze up about 45 minutes into the run and by the time I finished, I had a solid block of ice in my hand. I ran the last hour and a half with no liquid intake. I do have another problem and that is dry feet. I have cracks now on the bottom of my feet due to the dry cold weather and they're a little painful. I've been using moisturizing lotion but it doesn't seem to be working.

I ended up doing about 10 laps around the shopping mall parking lot. I had originally set my mind on trying to find a new route, but I figurered that it wasn't a day to be experimenting. One thing about my long run was it seems that my HR came down compared to previously and my pace is getting a bit quicker. It's been a while since I averaged faster than a 9 min/mile for a long run so it seems to be coming back. I think it may have something to do with the fact that I've been running in slippery conditions for a while which forces me to be very efficient with running. The parking lot roadways were bone dry and the increase in efficiency shows.

Lap	Lap Time		Lap	Lap Time
1	09:05.40		9	08:09.30
2	08:49.90		10	08:33.80
3	08:43.10		11	08:27.70
4	08:58.00		12	08:35.30
5	08:29.90		13	08:39.20
6	08:39.60		14	08:44.30
7	08:44.00		15	08:28.40
8	08:28.70

Did a little under 42 miles this week.
This next week is looking to be more of the same cold weather, which I'm really starting to hate. This was about my limit in terms of weather.