Weekly Summary – 147 Miles in 14 runs. A great week with plenty of miles and a couple very strong workouts including a super solid long run with a lot of marathon and half-marathon paced running and a hills session.
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Lunes, 12 de Diciembre, 2016 – 10:30am: Weird night! Had some kind of relatively strong allergic reaction to some unknown agent (food? environment?) and woke up with nasty hives on only my knees and elbows around 11pm. Took some benadryl and then slept for a bit but woke up and it had migrated to wrists, inner arm, etc. Very unpleasant! Tried to get a hold of doctor this morning and had a call into his office but had to leave to run eventually since I had a (different) doctor’s appointment this afternoon. Hives had basically gone down by the time I left to run and didn’t bother me at all while running.
Ran on Matt’s loop + towpath and finished with 6x strides on the grass. Felt pretty good on all this and was running comfortably ~4’30/km for the most part. Strides felt pretty good.
Total run 13M++ in 1h33.
XT: p90x.
5pm: The allergic reaction saga continues – really bad reaction again after breakfast (which makes me wonder if it’s food related? I haven’t eaten anything outside my normal diet at all in the last 24 hours though, so that’s super weird). Super unpleasant afternoon. Took a cold bath with some baking soda which helped and finally just went out to run at like 5pm because it was getting dark soon.
Hives didn’t bother me running again. Run felt pretty decent all things considered. Did 8km out/back on MVN in 36’ (19’ out/17’ back) and then did 2 more miles on the treadmill since it was dark and I don’t like running on MV at night. Finished around 3’40/km which felt good.
Total run 7M in 50’.
Martes, 13 de Diciembre, 2016 – 11:30am: Another brutal night. Worst break-out yet as I was going to bed. Up and extremely uncomfortable until about midnight when benadryl finally began to kick in and I was able to fall asleep. Ended up sleeping very late until after 10am, which I let myself do since I was so exhausted from the previous night.
Ran solo out/back on MVS. Hives had mostly receded at that point. Felt pretty good. Got passed by some bigger (i.e. taller and stockier) while I was running like 4’30/km which is not very common. Felt good and nice change of scenery. Ran past the big bridge to 10km turn around (~45’) and then came back a good bit quicker ~4’10s the last 5-8km. Stopped on the grass before black squirrel bridge and did 6x strides which went from feeling terrible on the first one to quite good by # 2 or 3. Jogged back. Total run 13M in 1h30.
XT: Back/hips
4:30pm: Easy run out/back on MVS again. Much better today. No outbreak since last night. Felt pretty good. Holding back consciously with a harder effort tomorrow. 10km on the road (24’/21’) and then 1M quicker on the treadmill with 1km ~2’59. Total run 7M+ in 48’.
XT: Hips.
Miercoles, 14 de Diciembre, 2016 – Sparknotes: 14km Fartlek in 43’50 (3’07.8/km avg) with 3 sets of [2km @ 5’59-6’06, 1km @ 3’23-28, 1km @ 2’51-52, 1km @ 3’23-28).
10am: Slept well but still a bit tired this morning from the last few days, body not feeling 100%. Ran easy out/back on MVN to warm up and then changed into claytons and over to the loop. Weather was good, not too windy and in the 40s. Started out okay pace wise but reps definitely felt harder than they should have and wasn’t recovering super well on the 1km in between (as is evident from the HR data after the fact). Had planned to do 4 sets but the 3rd 2km rep was very hard and 6 seconds slower, so decided to call it after 3 sets (14k).
I think the body is just not ready to run hard and fast today for whatever reason. Probably partly due to whatever weird stuff was going on with my immune system in the past few days and also just getting used to running a lot more.
Cooled down short home, legs circuit at the gym. Pretty tired.
Total run 15M.
Time Split HR
2 km 5’58.7 (5’58.7) 178
3 km 9’24.6 (3’25.9) 176
4 km 12’16.1 (2’51.5) 186
5 km 15’41.6 (3’25.5) 180
7 km 21’41.8 (6’00.2) 179
8 km 25’05.7 (3’23.9) 174
9 km 27’57.5 (2’51.8) 185
10 km 31’24.4 (3’26.9) 180
12 km 37’30.2 (6’05.8) 181
13 km 40’58.4 (3’28.2) 179
14 km 43’50.4 (2’52.0) 187
XT: Legs circuit. 3 sets of [step up (15x each leg), overhead lunge (24x), dynamic lunge (24x), squat (12x)]. 10 pounds on sets 2 and 3.
4pm: Easy run, legs felt pretty good, nothing too bad left over from the morning. Total run 5M, NT.
Jueves, 15 de Diciembre, 2016 – 10am: Slept well and later after a relatively late night at dinner with the family. Felt good and RHR was back down which is a good sign. Ran on the treadmill today because weather was miserable (25F and 25MPH winds!) and I’m a huge baby. Watched all of “The Lobster” which is an odd and dark movie. Started slow and worked down to just about 4’20/km and held there for the most part. Got very hot. Total run 16M in 1h53.
XT: Back/hips
4pm: Easy run around CCS. Felt pretty good, better than yesterday for sure. Finished with 6x strides which felt very good. Total run 10km, 6M+ in 45’.
XT: P90x.
Viernes, 16 de Diciembre, 2016 – Sparknotes: 10km mod + 15x short hills + 5km prog in 14’54 (3’08->2’47).
9:30am: Hills day – ran 6M moderate around CCS loop and then back to get flats and over to marriott hill. Did drills and then 15x short hills with full recovery (HR <120bpm). Felt very good on these. Recovery not too bad, only like 1’15-1’45. After, jogged to 1km loop (in flats still) for 5km prog. Wanted to run something like 3’10->2’50, getting ~5s faster each km. Went very well. Felt great running 3’00-3’08 on first 3 laps to come to 3km in 9’12 and then last two laps were very strong 2’55, 2’47 to come sub 15, 14’53.9 final time. Very, very strong for this early in the season after hills session. Very pleased with how comfy the 3’00 pace felt though, especially after not feeling great on Wed.
Finished with ~2M cool down around CC and then back to the gym for leg circuit. Long morning!
Total run 14M.
Splits:
Time Split HR
1 km 3’07.9 (3’07.9) 154
2 km 6’11.8 (3’03.9) 173
3 km 9’12.1 (3’00.3) 179
4 km 12’06.7 (2’54.6) 183
5 km 14’53.9 (2’47.2) 185
XT: Legs circuit. 3 sets of [step up (15x each leg), overhead lunge (24x), dynamic lunge (24x), squat (12x)]. 10 pounds on everything, bar on squat.
4pm: Easy run after great restful afternoon. First 30’ very easy with Mar on MVS out/back then quicker solo around CC over to grass loop. Finished with 3x strides on turf field just to open up the legs and then jog back. Total run 8M+ in 62’.
Sabado, 17 de Diciembre, 2016 – 10am: Ran solo before Jon came over. Planned to run outside but there was a thin layer of ice on EVERYTHING. Almost killed myself trying to run down Crystal drive and onto MVN so just ran inside until Jon got here. Did 10x strides which felt good. About 8M total.
Met up with Jon and then ran with him and Mariana in Crystal City Shops because it was still super icy. Did 3 out/backs which was about 9km. Very slow but fun and good company. Total run 13M+.
4:15pm: Ran solo from Earthtreks while Mar and Brett/Erin were climbing. Felt really bad at first but much better after the turn around. Very good last 2M or so (~4’00-10/km). Finished with 3x easy strides and then back to ET.
Total run 7M++ in 51’.
Domingo, 18 de Diciembre, 2016 – Sparknotes: 6km @ 18’43 (3’07/km), 5km @ 15’14 (3’03/km), 4km @ 12’04 (3’01/km), 3km @ 8’55 (2’59/km), 2km @ 5’54 (2’57/km), 1km @ 2’53 with 1km between each @ 3’47 avg. Total 26km in 1’22’40 (3’11/km avg). Very strong!
10am: Last big workout of this mini-block before a few days of recovery. Goal for the workout was to do a bunch of running at both marathon pace and HM pace and keep the workout continuous (and moderately long at 26km) with 6k, 5k, 4k, 3k, 2k, 1k with 1k between each one relatively moderate. Ideally, the first two reps would be around MP and after that it would all be closer to HMP (~3’00/km?), but really the idea was to progress through each rep and the whole workout and just kind of see what happened.
Warmed up 14’ 2M around CC and over to 1km loop. Changed into flats and did 3x strides plus 200m in ~36. Felt very good and warmed up. Took a gel about 15’ before starting. Weather was great, wind died down perfectly for the 2 hours I was working out and temp was about 58F.
Started with workout purposefully quick for the first 400-500m or so. I’ll probably try to do this with most of my MP workouts as the Lake Biwa start is usually super fast as it’s apparently on a track and the front of the race usually runs the first 400m in like 68 (and even mid pack is running 70-low). So, probably ran about 70.x and then slowed down a lot to come through in 3’06.
Rest of the first rep felt very comfortable around 3’08-10 and then I ran the last 1km more focused for 3’01 to come through 18’43. Took recovery lap very easy as I knew it was more important to run fast on the “on” reps than to keep the rest at a certain pace and was surprised to see it was under 4’00 (3’48).
5K rep was very good and faster than I’d expected. Running 3’04-06 for the first 4km and then again picked it up in the last 1500m or so to run 2’56 for the last lap (that was probably a bit too much).
4K was probably the hardest mentally as it still felt pretty long but I was trying to keep the effort a lot higher (plus the first two intervals were a good bit quicker than I’d expected). Ran the first 1km a bit slower to try to ease into the quicker pace at 3’04 then 3’01/3’00/2’58 at a pretty constant effort.
Last 3 reps all felt very manageable as it seemed like all the hardest running was out of the way. 3K felt hard but not too long and then the last two reps both felt very short. Amazing to run 5’54 and then 2’53 and feel so strong at the end of this workout after struggling so much to run 6’00 for 2Ks on Wednesday. My body has definitely rebounded from whatever was going on early last week.
Overall, it was 26km in 1’22’40 (3’10.9/km avg). The “on” work was 21km in 63’44 (3’02.1/km avg).
This was a really strong workout and a great end to this first block, especially after a poor workout on Wednesday. Leaves me very pleased with where my fitness is and excited about doing more of this faster running over the next 4 weeks before Houston.
Also – worth noting – I did this same workout before the Trials (6 weeks out) and ran MUCH slower for the “on” reps (19’18/15’57/12’30/9’18/6’01/2’53) but quicker recovery (3’35), which makes sense as I was more marathon focused, but even still this was faster overall and a much stronger workout, plus earlier in the season. Very good sign!
Cooled down very short about 1M home. Quite sore!
Total run 20M+.
Gels at T-15’ and 11km.
Time Split HR Rep Pace
1 km 3’06.0 (3’06.0) 164
2 km 6’15.7 (3’09.7) 173
3 km 9’25.2 (3’09.5) 173
4 km 12’33.0 (3’07.8) 174
5 km 15’42.0 (3’09.0) 174
6 km 18’43.2 (3’01.2) 176 (18’43.2) (3’07.2)
7 km 22’31.3 (3’48.1) 160
8 km 25’37.3 (3’06.0) 173
9 km 28’40.8 (3’03.5) 175
10 km 31’44.9 (3’04.1) 175
11 km 34’48.1 (3’03.2) 178
12 km 37’44.8 (2’56.7) 182 (15’13.5) (3’02.7)
13 km 41’33.1 (3’48.3) 167
14 km 44’36.9 (3’03.8) 178
15 km 47’38.0 (3’01.1) 181
16 km 50’38.4 (3’00.4) 182
17 km 53’36.7 (2’58.3) 183 (12’03.6) (3’00.9)
18 km 57’26.6 (3’49.9) 167
19 km 1’00’25.6 (2’59.0) 181
20 km 1’03’25.1 (2’59.5) 182
21 km 1’06’22.5 (2’57.4) 183 (8’55.9) (2’58.6)
22 km 1’10’06.8 (3’44.3) 167
23 km 1’13’05.2 (2’58.4) 178
24 km 1’16’01.5 (2’56.3) 185 (5’54.7) (2’57.4)
25 km 1’19’47.2 (3’45.7) 171
26 km 1’22’40.4 (2’53.2) 186 (2’53.2) (2’53.2)
4:30pm: Easy shakeout around CC. Very windy and much cooler! Very slow shuffle to start, much better by the end. Total run 3M- in 24’.
