This Sunday was kind of exciting as RunningAhead informed me that my 18 mile long run put me at 205.5 miles for the last 30 days. Not an all-time record, but it's been quite a while since I broke the 200 barrier for a 30-day period! (I think I'll be just a few miles shy of it for the month of August, just because of how the days fall. Not that I'm counting because who does that.)
Then on Friday morning, I woke up with my lower back feeling like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. I don't remember doing anything to it Thursday and it was perfectly fine when I went to bed, but when I got up I found myself completely unable to bend more than about 30°forward. Thankfully it was a good day for working from home!
My massage guy is 30 miles away in Palo Alto & usually takes at least a couple of weeks to book, so I was thankful that I managed to get a same-day sports massage with a reputable place here in the city. In addition to a bunch of stuff I already know (I live on the outside edges of my feet, have a super effed-up right hip/groin situation, a petrified left ankle, & generally insanely tight leg muscles all around), the therapist told me that it looked like I had basically sprained my right SI joint, i.e. threw my back out, probably via running (because seriously what else).
It was much improved after the massage though not perfect, and he said I could expect it to take another few days to a week to get back to normal. In the mean time, he said I could do whatever I wanted as long as I could tolerate the discomfort & it was pretty unlikely I would make it worse. Running didn't seem to bother it that much so I went ahead with my Friday pace run as planned -- 2 warm up, 50:00 @ marathon pace, 2 cool down.
This workout was not god-awful (I did complete the whole thing at a completely within-expectations pace & heart rate, pausing only for traffic lights in the Park + 1 water stop), but it was definitely MUCH harder than the 11.4 mile speed workout three days prior. (It was also on rolling concrete instead of the track, so there is also that.)
Part of me really wonders what would happen if I swapped Track Tuesdays with F-pace Fridays. Those speed days don't really feel that hard at the time, but I think they really do have a lingering effect in terms of general fatigue.
At 7:30 I was sitting on the couch in sweats & wet hair when Don texted me like "Let's go out for a nice dinner!" and I kind of snorted because the idea of getting a Friday dinner reservation in SF anywhere good when it's already dinner time is hilarious, but I dutifully fired up OpenTable & SeatMe to see what was available. In a completely random & bizarre turn of events, I snatched up an 8:30 res at Nightbird, a new restaurant that I remembered reading about recently. I didn't remember much about the food except that it was supposed to be really good & people were super excited about it opening.
Well, it turned out it was only their second night, so I have no idea how such a prime reservation for a highly anticipated opening was just sitting there an hour beforehand! The food was an absolutely brilliant five-course pre fixe (plus a couple of snacks) with wine pairing.
They also had some really interesting & tasty cocktails. So Bay Area peeps, if you're looking for a splurgy, amazing dinner in the city, check it out!
As I get further back into this actual training thing, it just becomes so, so completely clear that (to the extent that I was meant to run anything), I was meant to run 5K (or shorter) races and not really marathons. I always get so worried about going back to the track after a big chunk of nothing but super easy miles, but get me part way into that first workout and it's like, "Yes, this is my core competency, I know how to do this. I know how to go fast (for me)." I have never once come even close to running the marathon times I'm "supposed" to be able to run based on other races, but I almost never finish a speed workout, even quite long ones, feeling like I've worked all that hard. (And that's almost always having run a little faster than the assigned paces.)
Last week's 9 mile workout including 10 x 600m @ 5K pace? Not a problem. This week I was a little surprised to see what RunCoach refers to as a "Big Workout," an 11-12 mile workout consisting of a chunk of marathon pace running sandwiched between two sets of harder intervals.
In my last marathon cycle, I wasn't assigned this type of workout until about six weeks before the race, and I think I only did it maybe twice. Looking over my current training plan, though, there are about nine more of them between now and CIM. Which I suppose is just what happens when you, like, train consistently for more than a few months at a time & don't keep getting hurt or whatever. (Hopefully I haven't just jinxed myself.)
This week's big news is no, I have not completely lost the ability to move my body at a sub-7:00 pace. #smallvictories
FIRST: So when I started counting weeks for CIM, I updated my defunct Strava profile & started posting runs again. I don't know why, or what I hope to get out of it. I don't know why I signed up for Strava in the first place. I don't even read other people's workouts because who has time for that once you finish reading blogs, facebook, twitter, & instagram. But there it is, so if seeing my weekly miles unfold in real time before your very eyes will somehow improve your life, by all means click over.
I think most of us would agree that endurance athletes tend to have a certain temperament, part of which is the ability to make a long-term commitment to consistently do incremental, sometimes-boring, not-necessarily-gratifying work on a day-to-day basis without much in the way of immediate feedback. Like, if you're the type of person who needs to see progress on a daily or even weekly basis, you probably won't find endurance sports very satisfying.
For the most part, I do okay with the day-to-day grunt work. I'm mostly fine with delaying gratification, but it is still nice to see some evidence that the work you're doing is accomplishing something. I get this urge even more when I'm doing nothing but slow, easy runs, I suppose because it can get soooo monotonous.
Anyway, if you come here often, you probably know that this summer has been a VERITABLE THREE-RING CIRCUS of aerobic base training up in here. Garmins! Heart rate monitors! Maaaaaaaybe breaking marathon pace + 1:30 going downhill with a tailwind!
I'm not going to completely rehash the whole "Why aerobic base training?" schpiel here, but you can check out the following posts if you want to read more.
Because numbers are my favorite (also because I enjoy a little validation as much as the next gal), I've been collecting data on my runs this summer & putting it all into a nifty little Excel table, plotting the date on the x-axis and my running economy (or, really, a decent proxy thereof) on the y-axis. (Units = miles per heart beat. Technically speaking running economy is about oxygen consumption, but heart rate is a pretty good indicator of that and is much easier to measure directly.)
So, after 9 weeks, what have we got?
(See this post for information on my methodology/math.)
Not bad, eh?
As you can see, the data jumps around a lot from day to day and even week to week because there are so many factors that can affect your pace & heart rate on a given day (weather, sleep, stress, medications, general fatigue, GPS issues, HRM accuracy, etc.). Because of this, you need rather a lot of data points before you can see the trend clearly.
BUT, after 9 weeks, there is a clear trend. We can have Excel calculate & plot the line of best fit (which you can see running through the data points.) Much, much cooler, though, is the fact that we can also have it calculate the variance (the number labeled R2). What is variance? Basically, it tells you what percent of the trend the x variable is responsible for. In the data above, R2 ≈ .33, which tells us that the x value (the date, ie, how many days of base training I've done) is responsible for about 33% of the variation. That means all those other things (weather/sleep/stress/GPS/HRM accuracy/etc.) account for about 67% of it.
Essentially, this is telling us that about a third of how efficiently I've run on any given day has been a result of how far into the training I am (and also that there is a lot of noise caused by other factors--weather, device accuracy, sleep, stress levels, etc.).
Now, we can't automatically assume all of that 33% is due to base training, because there are some other things connected to the passage of time besides how much base training I've done. For example, how many days of strength training I've done, or the fact that I have gradually been losing a little weight these last few weeks as my mileage has picked back up. If I wanted to be SUPER rigorous I'd have to control for all those things (which is a little impractical if you're just a normal person training to do your best at a race).
Obviously I expect to still continue getting faster as I add in speed & tempo work due to improving my VO2 max & lactate threshold, but I am curious to keep tracking this data for my easy runs to see if my running economy continues to improve between now & CIM, or if it levels off.
Want to track your own running economy (or proxy thereof)? I have a spreadsheet with all the formulas already set up which I'm happy to share with anyone who's interested. Just let me know.
It's not sarcasm! I really have!
Something I love about distance running is the periodic nature of training cycles. After giving 110% at a target race, it's so nice to have a week off, followed often by a chunk of easy base training. I like training for races, but there's something very calming about having some time away from that where all I have to do is come home from work, throw on running clothes, grab my watch, & turn my brain off while I log mile after mile of relaxed, easy running. Inevitably, though, I start to get a little bored with the same-ol', same-ol', & find myself longing for faster paces and the sensation of zooming around the curves at the track; before you know it, I'm eagerly counting down days until my first speed workout of the next cycle.
And, full disclosure, I usually also have some butterflies about going back to those fast workouts, too. I always wonder whether I'll be able to hit the same paces as before, and how hard it will feel after a couple of months of hanging out in zone 2, and how my injury-prone body will acclimate to the added strain. I have always been more of a 5K-10K runner than a marathoner, though, so for the most part, knowing it's almost time to get back out on the track gets me excited.
This past Tuesday evening was my first speed session since April, with ten 600m repeats / 200m jogs on tap. The goal was 2:38 for each interval (7:05 pace), and I was curious to see just how easy or hard that felt after such a long break from fast running. Happily, they really didn't feel very hard at all, and I easily kept them between 2:33 & 2:37 (~6:45 pace on average).
Something that I've noticed about going back to the track after a chunk of base training is how, although it doesn't necessarily make the pace feel any easier, it's kind of dramatic how much easier it feels to do a longer speed session (9 miles in this case) and feel almost as good by the end as I did at the start. In addition to hitting the pace with no problem all the way to the end, I also did the whole thing start to finish with no pauses or breaks. (Sometimes I end up stopping once or twice for water but I am trying to get out of the habit of that whenever possible.)
Up next: Tempo run #1 on Friday!
The Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. How many times have I met up with friends here for group runs or looped past it during long runs? The world may never know.
This wasn't the dumbest week ever but it was kind of close. (That distinction probably still belongs to this week.)
