Sunday, April 27, 2014

The Week of 04/21/2014: No Such Thing as a Bad Run

The hardest part of marathon training for me is to find the balance between active training, getting proper rest, maintaining a good family life, and having a full time job.

By and large since I got into the serious portion of my 2014 Grandma's marathon training, I have been completing all my midweek mileage.  However, this week marked the second time that I have skipped a long run.  This differs from my 2012 TC training, where I did every long run but was notorious for missing out on midweek mileage.

I have reconfigured my long run schedule; fortunately there was still some wiggle room in the ramp up to accommodate missing this week.  But that wiggle room is gone now, and I cannot afford to take any more long runs off.  Hopefully I can complete this training program more or less intact with no further mileage gutting.


Monday 04/21/2014

Scheduled:  6 Mile Recovery Run
When I woke up this morning I still felt  little beat up from yesterday's 8 miler.  I decided to take a rest and will make up the mileage later in the week.

Tuesday 04/22/2014

Scheduled:  6 Miles, 6x100m sprints
34º, Clear. It felt good to go faster after so many recovery runs and marathon pace tempo runs. I ran the sprints faster than 5k pace (I could not have sustained for 3.1 miles) and breezed through the rest of each mile, coming in at a few seconds under my HMP for each.

I felt very good afterwards - little to no stiffening, knees are good, left foot is good, and right plantar fascia has only minimal discomfort.  Overall I think that physically I am in a good place right now.

Wednesday 04/23/2014

Scheduled:  8 Mile Recovery run
44º, Mostly Cloudy.  A good & uneventful run, accompanied by a beautiful sunrise.

Thursday 04/24/2014

Scheduled: 10 Miles, 6 Mile Tempo @ MP
42º, overcast, light rain.  I ran this midweek long run by the book, with a 6 mile tempo @ marathon pace.

It continues to amuse me that my mood can swing so much over the course of a couple of miles; I of course felt fine during the first 4 easy miles, I felt great for the first 4 miles of the tempo, and then in the last 2 I began to struggle a little bit - I was keeping the pace but it wasn't as effortless as the middle of the run was.  And when something stops being effortless, I am inclined to be less enthusiastic about it.

So it's weird how an otherwise "Good" run can be marred by negative thinking.  For me this is one of the reasons that I run with earbuds & listen to music.  As attractive as it may sound on the surface, even I don't want to be stuck alone with me inside my head for too long.

With the unexpected early retirement of the Asics GT-1000's, I have been left vulnerable on the shoe front - I lucked out today that the hard rain didn't start coming down until after I was finished, and thus will have a dry pair of shoes to use tomorrow.   But my luck cannot hold out forever, so I 'expanded the herd' tonight and pulled the trigger on a pair of Nike Air Pegasus (Last year's model) purchased cheaply on eBay.  I needed another pair of shoes anyway, there was no way that I was going to make it all the way through training and then Grandma's on one pair of shoes.

Friday 04/25/2014

Scheduled: XT (Swimming)
32º, Foggy, Calm.  6 mile Recovery run.

I decided to make up the run that I skipped on Monday.  It was a perfect bookend to yesterday's run:  Yesterday I started out fine, felt great in the middle and felt crappy at the end.  Today I started out crappy, felt fine in the middle and felt great at the end.  I don't get to run in fog very often, so today's run was pretty neat.

Saturday 04/26/2014

Scheduled: 16 Mile Long Run
I took today as a rest.  I woke up late and by the time I had my wits about me there was no way that I would be able to get a 16 miler in before my family was up and moving.  We spent the entire day at the Mall of America, celebrating my son's birthday by letting him go on unlimited rides.  We didn't get home until 10PM; by then it was raining and I had no interest in running both in the dark and in the rain, when my bed was right there and so inviting.

Sunday 04/27/2014

Scheduled: REST
Given the late night (By my tame standards, at least) the night before, I slept in and got my rest today.  I had it half in my head to maybe get out for an easy run in the afternoon for at least some of the mileage that I skipped yesterday.  But by afternoon it was not only raining but thundering as well.  I ignored that fact that I have a treadmill in the basement and took my rest day as planned.

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