(You may recognize this trail from Week 6, though it looked a bit different then....)
I'm not totally sure what's the point in continuing with these weeklies, but let's just go with it for shites and gigglz. (You know the smiling-crying emoji? Imagine that here. If you're on my social mediaz, you've seen those a lot lately so you're used to it.)
Grand Total: 41 miles
- * 16 easy
* 5 pace/tempo
* 20 long
Monday 3/26: Rest.
- I really thought I'd bounce back from the Oakland Marathon like I have from previous 22-23 mile runs & even marathons & be able to go to karate, but apparently when you really haven't been training all that hard and then you set a personal time-spent-continuously-running record, you need at least one complete rest day.
Add to the list of things I know I can do: Run (almost) continuously for 4 1/2 hours.
Tuesday 3/27: 2 warm up, 6 x 200m / 200m jog, 4 @ MP, 6 x 200m / 200m jog
- Okay fine, you need *two* complete rest days. And in retrospect this was a bad one to miss. D: Those of you new to kinda-sorta-semi-serious-for-real-training for stuff, this is why you don't do shit that take two days to recover from. You end up missing important workouts, or not being capable of running them effectively. #lessonslearned
(That said, I do think *finishing* the Oakland Marathon was really valuable for me mentally, so in this particular situation there was kind of a trade-off. I don't know if it was a GOOD trade off or if I would do it again, but I don't completely 100% regret it.)
Wednesday 3/28: Karate
Thursday 3/29: 8 easy
Friday 3/30: 2 warm up, 2 @ aerobic threshold, 1 @ HM pace, 2 @ aerobic threshold, 2 cool down.
- This was the first time I did anything faster than super-easy running since blowing out my hamstring two weeks before, so honestly I was just hoping to get through it. My pacing and/or my GPS were badly off and/or out of sync for a lot of the time--there were so many times when I felt like I was running the right pace but Garmin said I was 0:40/mile too fast or vice versa, or my watch was showing a certain average pace and then the mile would tick off in 0:20 faster, but in the end they all washed out to more or less in the right range and OMG NO PAIN OR INJURIES!!!!
Saturday 3/31: 4 easy
- Friday night we drove up to Tahoe for the weekend, & while Don skiied on Saturday I did a quick shakeout run & was glad I did. Apparently when you don't run fast for ~2 weeks your body gets grumpy about it & there were clearly a few gremlins that needed to be worked out. Basically:
Mile 1: RUNNING SUCKS, WHYYY
Mile 2: STILL SUCKS, WHYYY
Mile 3: Seriously, fuck this shit forever.
Mile 4: HEYYY THERE YOU ARE LEGS!!!
Sunday 4/1: 20 long
- I have to admit, having run nearly 27 miles the weekend before, I was pretty cavalier about this run. "Eh, 20 miles, pssshhh, the shortest starts-with-a-2 long run this cycle, WHATEVS." I will give myself credit for packing the clothes I plan to run Boston in and wearing sunscreen; I 100% lose points for not packing Body Glide and forgetting that, OH YEAH, on 3+ hour runs in the sun (and it was very sunny in Tahoe this past weekend), you tend to need water at some point. Did I pack a bottle? No; *of course* I did not pack a bottle.
Thankfully, it's that weird time in Tahoe where it's super warm and sunny (and by "super warm" I mean low 50°s) but there are still massive snow banks along the sides of the trail, so, not gonna lie, this run became all about the stop-and-eat-snow breaks. (Yes, I dug down below the gross top layer, and also please don't @ me re: things I don't want to know about eating free-range snow.)
But guys, I'm not gonna lie, this run got hard at mile 6 and just never really got any better. Potential reasons why include a) the fact that I've never tried to run 20 miles seven days after running a marathon, and b) 6,000+' of altitude. (See again average heart rate of around 175/bpm running ~10:00 miles with breaks [soooo many breaks], when my PR marathon "race heart rate" is 182 bpm.)
But also, I think there was a real mental component here; I really just did. Not. Wanna, and was completely unmotivated to power through more than one or two hard miles at a time. Like, seriously, so very very few fucks to give, in a way that I don't remember ever experiencing this close to an "A" race ever before. Still, I *did* get it done [soooo many breaks][soooo much snow eaten][only a *little* chafing & sunburn], so there is that.
There were compensations, however.
====
Boston Marathon Week 1 of 18: On your mark, Get set...
Boston Marathon Week 2 of 18: speed, snow, & vertical
Boston Marathon Week 3 of 18: Foiled By Weather & Travel
Boston Marathon Week 4 of 18: There's "hills" and then there's HILLLZZ
Boston Marathon Week 5 of 18: Not the greatest of weeks...
Boston Marathon Week 6 of 18: Winter Running: Take 2
Boston Marathon Week 9 of 18: Grumpy Hip is Grumpy
Boston Marathon Week 10 of 18: "altitude training" + should I run a birthday 10K?
Boston Marathon Week 11 of 18: How Not to Plan Your Training Week
Whew, this week sounds really tiring, especially running a 20 miler so soon after a marathon. Yikes. But you got it done, and there's a huge mental component to that that will be good to take into Boston. I hope you're recovering well from everything and that taper is going well too because it's almost here!
ReplyDeleteDude. That's a ton of miles in 8 days!
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ReplyDeleteSeriously thank you for pointing this out, because I had not done that particular math & it makes me feel a little better about how crappy I feel!
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