Weekly summary – 91 miles in 14 runs. A great race at Broad Street 10 Mile (49’39 for 9th) and some solid workouts as well. Big drop in mileage as we approach the end of the season to get the legs feeling a bit fresher. Less than 3 weeks to Vermont City Marathon!
Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram and Twitter (@TylerCAndrews). And, of course, don’t forget to check out STRIVE’s 2017 Programs! You can come do service work and train with me in Peru or Kenya and for 2017, we’ll once again have programs for High School and College students, and even a 10-day trip for adults and families, so be sure to take a look if you’re interested in an amazing summer experience! Finally, I have a few spots open for athletes looking for custom training plans and online coaching. Check out my site and email me if you’re interested!
Lunes, 1 de Mayo, 2017 – 8am: Easy run on hilly ridge loop. 2 loops very relaxed 19’00/18’40 as legs were a bit sore from 1-2 punch weekend. Much better by the end though. Jogged over to costco turf for barefoot strides. Got a bit of athletes’ foot which really bugs me when I run barefoot, so did shoe-strides on the soccer field. Those felt really good, though, so a good call. Jogged home. Also over dressed a lot, around 75F and humid and wore pants, 2x long sleeve, track jacket, hat/gloves. Total run 8.5M in 61’.
XT: Back/hips
3pm: Easy run down to turf and 1.5km barefoot (wore socks, so sock-foot I guess) and then 5x strides which felt very good. Jogged back. Total run 5km in 21’.
XT: p90x
Martes, 2 de Mayo, 2017 – 8am: Another over-dressing run on the hilly AR loop. Slower this morning, a bit depleted and maybe warmer than yesterday. Finished at costco field and did 9x strides (in shoes, trying to let my toe heal, so keeping off the barefoot for a bit more). Total run 8M+, 13km+ in 60’.
XT: Back/hips
3:30pm: Ran down to longbridge and on the turf barefoot 2km in ~8’00. Felt much better than this AM. Did 6x strides (barefoot) which also felt good. Had to get some photos in the new HOKA gear, so did some running back and forth around long bridge after. Jogged home. Total run 4M+ in 30’.
XT: Hips.
Miercoles, 3 de Mayo, 2017 – Sparknotes: 10km fartlek in 30’22 w/ 1’ @ 2’45-55/km, 1’ @ 3’12-20/km.
9am: Fartlek today, a bit lighter and less structured than the speed sessions I’ve been doing with Broad Street on Sunday and a nice 1-2 effort on Saturday/Sunday last weekend.
Much cooler today and ran before the wind really picked up, so basically felt like superman after the last couple hot races and a few weeks in the 80s and over dressing. Warmed up 5km around CC and then to the 1K loop, changed into tracer flats, did drills, 4x strides, 200m shooting for ~35 and ran 32.0 – hello!
Started out very well running the “on” around 2’50-55/km and the off around 3’15/km. Actually felt much better after the first few reps and found myself running more like 2’48-50/km for the on segments around 3-5km. Very nice to have that pace not feel too stressful! Recovery pace slowed bit to closer to 3’20 in the second half of the run, but I figured it was more important to try to run the “on” segments at a good clip, and recovering at 3’20/km from that is still very nice.
Finished with basically the last 800+ meters “on” since I was at 28’00 at the start of the “on” section, hence the last 2km were both quicker. Felt very good and ran strong the last 500m.
Ended up at 30’22 for 10km. A very good sign that legs are feeling good and fitness is improving nicely. Hard to believe this is only 4 weeks of “real” training this block!
Easy running from here to Broad St with a little blowout maybe on Friday AM.
Cooled down around CC to run some errands and then home, ethio, ice bath. Terrel/Georgetown Sports Massage in the PM.
Total run 13M.
Splits:
Time Split HR
1 km 3’00.3 (3’00.3) 172
2 km 6’05.6 (3’05.3) 172
3 km 9’05.2 (2’59.6) 175
4 km 12’10.7 (3’05.5) 175
5 km 15’10.2 (2’59.5) 175
6 km 18’16.9 (3’06.7) 175
7 km 21’17.9 (3’01.0) 175
8 km 24’24.2 (3’06.3) 176
9 km 27’24.8 (3’00.6) 178
10 km 30’22.4 (2’57.6) 179
4:15pm: Ran later to 5pm session with Terrell at GSM. Legs didn’t feel too bad after this morning. Running ~4’30/km for the most part, even with a very strong headwind coming off the river (seriously thought I was going to get blown off the bridge). Jog/metro/jog home. Total run 10km+ in 45’.
Jueves, 4 de Mayo, 2017 – 8am: Easy run on hilly AR loop. Felt good, much cooler again today, only about 60F. Wore 2x long sleeve, hoodie, jacket, hat/gloves, tights. Felt comfortable. 19’00/18’20 laps. Ran to costco turf and 10x barefoot strides. Felt good there. Jogged home. Total run 8.5M in 59’.
XT: Back/hips
3pm: Easy run down to turf and then 2km on turf in ~7’55 barefoot. 6x barefoot strides and then home. Total run 3.5M in 22.
XT: p90x.
Viernes, 5 de Mayo, 2017 – Sparknotes: 3200m blowout in 9’11 (4’43/4’28).
8am: Woke up naturally a good bit earlier and felt good. Very good sign!
Went out early to beat the storm. Felt good and ran 5km+ to TCW track in 21’ then did drills, strides, in flats. Around 65F, humid, moderate wind on the back stretch.
Workout was very short just 3200m (8 laps) trying to run each faster than the one before it. I figured starting comfortably around 10M/HM pace ~72.x and then trying to run the last 1600m under 4’30 would be good goals. I’ve done this workout a few times like this (i.e. 2 days before a race) and it always leaves me feeling good but not at all beat, as it’s so short.
First few laps were perfect, basically 72, 71, 70, 4th lap about the same (70) and then made a harder surge (67) for lap 5 to come to 2k in 5’51. The last 3 laps were quite tough and I slowed bit on lap 6 (68.9) before really going hard the last two (66.2, 65.2) to come to 9’11.1 The last 800m was 2’11.4 (~2’46 last km) and the last 1600m was 4’27.9.
This is a great confidence booster and a very strong workout. I think the fastest I’ve ever done this is ~9’05 and I want to say I ran about 9’10 pretty close to the end of my Lake Biwa buildup, so this is a very good sign!
Cooled down short, 1M to metro and home. Total run 7M.
0.4 km 1’12.2 (1’12.2) 172
0.8 km 2’23.1 (1’10.9) 173
1.2 km 3’33.0 (1’09.9) 174
1.6 km 4’43.2 (1’10.2) 176
2 km 5’50.8 (1’07.6) 179
2.4 km 6’59.7 (1’08.9) 182
2.8 km 8’05.9 (1’06.2) 184
3.2 km 9’11.1 (1’05.2) 186
5:30pm: Ran from Georgetown Sports Massage before appointment after long afternoon with the folks at the National African American History Museum. A lot of time on feet and pretty emotionally draining. Very intense place. Ran easy out/back on towpath and back on Cap Crescent because the C&O was a bit muddy. Total run 5km in 22’.
Sabado, 6 de Mayo, 2017 – 7:30am: Easy run on AR hill loop, surprisingly quicker this morning ~18’00 despite kind of holding back today. Good sign! Ran back home and then did strides in both (new) hupana and tracer to see what I wanted to run in. Will run in tracers. Did 2x200m at about RP in 35-36 to finish off and then jogged a lap. Total run 4M+ in 28’.
3:30pm: Easy travel day to Philly on amtrak. Got my number and then nice easy shakeout out/back on broad street (around mile 5-6). Lots of stoplights but good to shake the legs out. Cool! Wind felt like it was coming from lots of different directions, so unclear if it’ll feel that bad even if it’s a headwind tomorrow. At least in the downtown part it’s pretty blustery but from lots of different directions. Total run 5km in 22’.
Domingo, 7 day Mayo, 2017 – Sparknotes: Broad Street Run 10 Miler: 9th, 3rd US, 49’39 (4’58/M, 3’05/km). 12MPH headwind entire run and ended up in no-man’s land for a lot of it. Good effort.
7:15am: Up at 4:30am, actually woke up before my alarm – this early sleep schedule is nice. Coffee, nature valley bar, headed to the start around 6:15-30 which wasn’t quite enough time as the subway was slow, so by the time I got to the start it was close to 7:15am. Short warmup as I had to have gear on the truck by 7:40am, out/back 2M on the course. Felt good. Wind was strong and in our faces pretty much directly. Felt a huge difference when I turned around.
Back and changed into singlet and tracer flats. A bit cold to be in just this for 20+ minutes before the start but kept fairly warm, drills, a few strides, over to the line, few more strides from the line. Stood around on the line for maybe 6 or 7 minutes once the chairs had gone and tried to huddle penguin style to stay warm as wind was coming at is in the front. Finally got underway.
Felt good to get moving and got off the line well and right to the front. Tucked into the African pack (and one white guy leading the charge, in magic nike shoes) and we were actually out pretty slow ~4’55 at the mile, 9’50ish at 2M. I think it was after the 2M split that one of the Africans (red singlet) seemed to be pissed at the slow split and took off. The whole pack stretched but pretty much went with him, so I decided to cover the move and see if this was just a surge or an acceleration.
We ended up running 2km much quicker (2’55/2’51), 3rd mile in about 4’38, if I remember correctly, to come to 3M mile mat in just under 14’30. I was barely hanging on at this point and was struggling to maintain contact with the group. I let a tiny gap form and then all of a sudden Jonas Hampton and I were both 10m behind. He made a bold move pretty quickly to surge all the way back to the pack and closed the gap very quickly, but I couldn’t (he was spit back out pretty shortly thereafter, anyway).
From there, I was chasing Jonas for the next 6 miles or so and pretty much in the last place I wanted to be on a headwindy day: no man’s land. I tried to stay positive and work my way up to Jonas and got within a few seconds a couple of times but I just felt like I was running through sand out there with the wind.
Right after the loop around the City Hall (~6M), I got caught by a guy who seemed to be really hauling ass. He quickly went by me but I accelerated and surprisingly found myself tucked in behind him. It felt much easier all of a sudden, which may have partially been the wind, but I also think he’d slowed down a lot (as this would have been right around 11km which was 3’10). After seeing 7M, I actually surged as I was feeling better and ran one faster km (3’05), but was back in no-man’s-land. By 13km, he and his friend had caught up to me and we’d slowed again to 3’12. This time, I decided to just tuck in and focus on racing these guys instead of pressing out into windy solo territory.
I could see Jonas up ahead and we were definitely gaining on him in the last few miles. By mile 9, we were working hard and very close to him and by 15km, there were 4 of us all together. Jonas and I broke away with about 500m to go and he had an extra gear that I didn’t. I got passed by the other guy in the last 100m – ugh!
Still, ended up finishing in 49’39 which given the headwind and running by myself for much of the race is quite good. I think I hung together pretty well given the mental bummer of getting dropped at 5K and not just feeling sorry for myself and crapping out. Faster than I ran last year (when I probably ran a smarter race and in easier conditions – or just less slow, still pretty miserable as it was rainy and cold). Placed higher among Americans (3rd vs 5th) but worse overall (9th vs 7th).
The very odd and interesting thing to me is the HR data from this run. I almost wonder if it’s incorrect it looks so far off. The max HR for the whole run was only 177 and most of it was in the low 170s. For comparison, I ran the 50K at Doha with an average HR higher than this and my marathon HR is usually right around 170-172. Really, really surprising. The effort definitely felt hard – much harder than MP, not at all like I could have run another 16 miles! Very interesting datum in that perceived effort was NOT correlated to HR as expected.
Anyway, ran into Bellet after the race and cooled down with him maybe 1M or so around the parking lots and then had to stand around for a while and wait for awards and then long walk to the metro and back up town. Total run ~14M.
Time Split HR
1 km 3’01.7 (3’01.7) 157
2 km 6’12.3 (3’10.6) 169
3 km 9’13.5 (3’01.2) 173
4 km 12’09.2 (2’55.7) 175
5 km 15’00.7 (2’51.5) 175
6 km 18’11.4 (3’10.7) 174
7 km 21’17.2 (3’05.8) 172
8 km 24’22.0 (3’04.8) 171
9 km 27’30.3 (3’08.3) 171
10 km 30’30.9 (3’00.6) 171
11 km 33’40.5 (3’09.6) 171
12 km 36’46.4 (3’05.9) 172
13 km 39’58.5 (3’12.1) 170
14 km 43’05.4 (3’06.9) 172
15 km 46’12.7 (3’07.3) 172
16 km 49’16.4 (3’03.7) 173
16.14 km 49’39.4 (0’23.0) 174
4pm: Nice nap in the hotel and then shakeout run before taking the train home. Ran across town to the river bike path out/back. Nice shuffle to comfortable pace after a couple miles. Total run 10k in 43’.
