SRM WEEK 6: 39 & Holding

My plan called for 45-ish miles this week, but after tough runs on both Tuesday and Wednesday and waking up with sore, tender shins that continued to give me grief (in the form of sharp, stabbing pains) for the rest of the day, taking a rest day on Thursday & giving my legs some extra time to heal seemed like a better plan than trying to slog through seven easy miles & potentially re-aggravate something. I think I actually could have biked this day instead & been fine, but biking requires planning ahead & bringing biking clothes to work, which I had not done. So yeah; last Thursday was the first day since we've been back from Italy that I haven't sweated for athletic reasons. I think this is okay.

So, instead of 45-46ish, I ended up with 39 & change, which is basically the same as last week, and that's fine. After my tough Friday tempo run, I was mentally preparing myself to take Saturday off as well if my legs felt as bad as they did on Thursday, because if it came down to it I'd rather skip an easy 7 on Saturday & be able to do my long run Sunday than vice versa. But everything felt fine on both days, so in the end I did them both.

I now present you with Notes from my Long Run.

• Sunday morning I carb-loaded like a pro.
  
  (Probably not like an actual pro. I seem to recall reading something about Ryan hall eating plain oatmeal with splenda before a long run which kind of made me want to cry & then go throw up.)

• Because Santa Rosa is likely to be in the 50's at the start & 70's by the finish, I've been trying to ease myself into some heat acclimation training, starting by wearing a long sleeve shirt & shorts when I would normally wear a tank & shorts. What I failed to realize was that on Sunday afternoon an arctic vortex had apparently descended upon Golden Gate Park.

  Now you might think that wearing a long sleeve shirt instead of a tank was a great stroke of luck under the circumstances. Nope; wrong. All it meant was that there was more ice-cold sweat-soaked fabric in contact with my skin for the last 9 miles of my 11 mile run than there would have been otherwise. I am not kidding that it was like 45F with ~15mph winds. (Except down by the beach, where it was probably like 20-25mph winds.)

  
  "Let's run to the beach!" they said. "It'll be fun!" they said.

  (You'll have to use your imagination to see the sand blowing around everywhere.)

  My teeth were pretty much chattering the entire way. I don't really understand how it's possible to be shivering & sweating like a pig at the same time, but I do know that once your clothes are soaked it is OVER.

• 90 minutes seemed like a long enough run to reasonably start practicing fueling, so I had an Accel Gel before I started, another 30 minutes later, then a third 30 minutes after that, which was all fine. (Not surprising since that's basically what I've done in the past.) Accel Gels have 20g of CHO each, so two per hour is ~40g per hour. 30g / hour is the smallest dose of CHO that's been shown to make any difference in performance, & above that, being able to consume more generally predicts better performance. So, my plan is to gradually take gels closer and closer together during my long runs & see how close to 60g / hour I can get without my stomach revolting.
  
  I use Accel Gels because they have protein, which, for reasons I think exercise scientists are still trying to fully understand, seems to work better than pure CHO in races over ~20ish miles.

• My shins & calves never hurt while I'm running; only at every other possible time. I get deep aches in the stress fracture spot all the time when I'm just walking around, sitting, lying down, etc., but the bone is not tender at all (ie, I can roll a lacrosse ball right on that spot just fine) and running doesn't bother it, so I guess for now I'm not going to worry about it too much. (?)

* * * WEEK 6 * * *
(9 to go)

Grand Total: 39.25 miles

* 3.75 tempo
* 3.5 speed
* 11 long
* 21 easy

Plus:

* 2.25 hours strength/stretch/roll

Monday: a.m. strength work / p.m. karate

Tuesday: 7 speed (2 wu, 1600m @ 10K pace / 1:30 jog, 2x800m @ 5K pace / 2:00 jog, 1600m @ 10K pace, 1.5 cd)

Ugh. Just, ugh.

Wednesday: a.m. strength work / afternoon 7 easy / p.m. karate

How much of the suck? ALL OF THE SUCK! But, hey, it's Wednesday, & apparently that's just what Wednesday does in terms of running.

Thursday: 7 easy Rest.

Friday: a.m. strength work / p.m. 7.25 tempo (2 wu, 30 @ marathon pace, 1.5 cd)

Definitely my most traumatic run of the week.

Saturday 7 easy

I squeezed this one in between lunch & last-minute movie plans with a friend. It only takes me about an hour to run 7 miles, but thanks mostly to traffic lights in our neighborhood, door-to-door, a 7 miler usually takes me more like an hour twenty-ish. Our movie was at 6:40; I finished my sandwich at 4:30, left the house at 4:50, & promised to be back by 6:00 & figured I'd just get done whatever I could in that amount of time. Thanks to a bit of jay walking here & there I made it home by 6:00 having run 6.8 miles, but there was no way I was getting that close to 7 & quitting, so it ended up being more like 6:02.

Don: "Wow, you're back right on time!"

Me: "This is not my first rodeo."

Mainly I was just relieved to get one run under my belt this week that did not outright suck.

Sunday: 11 long

I'm still slated for ~49-ish miles next week, but given how hard this past week was, I'm not feeling super great about a ~25% increase, so it is not at all unlikely that something will get cut or shortened somewhere. We'll see!