Down weeks are never fun to write about. To avoid the issue for a few paragraphs, here are some fun numbers from the year of 2009.
Total Miles:
~3590 in 365 days
An average of ~9.84 per day and ~68.9 miles in any given 7 day period. This includes 38 days of missed training, mostly due to illness and my much-needed vacation after running stopped being fun this spring.
~24 competitions ranging from 400m to 10mi, ~15 of which (I might be missing a few relay performances) occurred during Jan-March.
I set personal bests in the 600, 800, 1000, mile, and 3000 meters. This entry actually marks the one year of this blog. Ultimately, 2009 proved to be one of the most difficult and most rewarding years in my running career. I upended my life by changing schools and put in a great summer of training, the full benefits of which I don't think I've seen yet. I set personal records over almost all of my primary distances despite a variety of health setbacks. Anway, that's about all the stats I can handle- I've never been much of a numbers guy.
Unfortunately, the log this week isn't very noteworthy. I'm still adjusting to the idea of "down weeks" not brought on by illness or injury. However, my history as an athlete is marked by my feeling good, putting week upon week of hard training in, starting to feel crappy, continuing forward stubbornly with the hard training, and then getting sick and missing 4-10 days of running. I'm trying to make it through to June healthy, so when I woke up feeling crappy Monday morning, I resolved to just run by feel and accept the fact that I would likely not run as far or as fast as I would like to run. Even so, I felt guilty all week for doing less. I'm working on getting better about doing the optimum training, not the maximum.
Monday- Off
Tuesday- Had a workout scheduled- 3mi, 2mi, 1mi- but it was 0deg with 30mph winds in Derry and I figured getting in a quality workout would be tough. Did 10mi moderate on a hilly course instead and was disappointed to see 66min on the watch when I returned. Cold, dark, miserable out.
Wednesday- AM- Drove back to Boston with bad traffic. 6PM- Thought I was too tired to work out, then felt ok after 3mi of running indoors, then decided to try the workout anyway. 3mi tempo in 15:48, felt awful- after this I regretted even trying to work out and just walked back to my apartment. 6 tot
Thursday- 9AM- easy River Loop, solo 3PM- 10mi, 67:30- decent clip, considering I was running through 2-3inches of snow.
Friday- PM- 10mi easy with Peter, portions of it with James, Rob, and Peter's buddy Nick, 71min, very slippery out.
Saturday- AM- worked the Mini-Meet, got to watch Rob and James open up their indoor seasons with 8:26 and 8:51 3k performances, respectively. James won his heat in a PR and Rob cracked a 7month racing hiatus with a 3k that was only a second or so slower than his PR. Great stuff! PM- Another damn snowstorm rolled through, so Bruce nixed the hills we had planned and had Peter and I repeat the 668, 668, 66 workout we did a few weeks ago. He cut the rest from 1:40 to 1:30 after the 600s and 2:10 from 2:20 after the 800s and told us to stay consistent with 34sec laps as opposed to running the last two reps quicker. Targets were 1:42 and 2:16- we alternated leads and went 1:42, 1:42, 2:16, 1:41, 1:41, 2:15, 1:41, 1:38. I felt sluggish on the warmup and after leading the first 600, almost called the workout- but by the first 800, I was running really easily and just strode through the rest of the workout feeling great. Longer c/d to make it 12 on the day. With the rests, I was still averaging about 5:20 for 4-4.5 mi.
Sunday- ANOTHER snowstorm! Roads were awful, and this time, James and I decided we'd rather run 6:40 without slipping instead of more shuffly 7:20s and did our 13mi run in 88:17 entirely indoors. A boring run around the track, sure- but it was nice to run at a reasonable clip.
Tot- 65
I started to come out of my funk mid-way through the workout on Saturday and woke up today feeling like I hadn't worked out at all. My first race got pushed back to the GBTC Invite at Harvard on the 24th, and will probably a mile instead of a 3k.
Hope everybody is staying healthy and adjusting to the cold!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
We almost had similar years... I ran ~3,386 miles and took off 40 days total.
ReplyDeleteWow haha 13 miles on a 200 m track.
ReplyDeleteHow often do you take down weeks?
I dunno, I think this is the first real one I've ever taken on purpose. All the other ones have been as a result of injury or illness.
ReplyDeleteKyle- wanna shoot for 4000 with me this year?
Hey, I wasn't sure if you were still using LRL4H (though I saw some posts on it)/using your other account yet so I just decided to post this here instead.
ReplyDeleteIt's January (no indoor track), 2 months out from the first races. One thing I've been noticing on my runs... I alternate between a 5-6 mile tempo and 3-4 mile tempo each week (like you said a while back). I could do 6-7 in the same time period if it was flat ground, but some of it is run on hills so it slows me down and I go by time/effort instead.
The thing I've been noticing is that my time for the 3-4 mile tempos aren't that much faster than the 5-6 mile tempos. I've done them on different surfaces at times (one time was soft slushy ground vs. harder dirt... or vs. kind of uneven dirt in parts) but overall, the shorter tempo isn't that much faster. Does this mean that I need to work on speed more? I do strides/hill sprints etc. (as well as a longer aerobic workout like 1200s etc) but perhaps something more is needed?
Do you have any thoughts on that? Thanks!
hi a1k-
ReplyDeleteCan you toss me an email? I have some specific questions I'd like to ask.
But in general, this could mean a couple things-
1) the difference in terrain was the deciding factor
2)you're running too hard on the long tempos
3) you're running a little on the easy side of the short tempos
Yea sure, what is your email? Is it craigmac4h@gmail.com?
ReplyDeleteyup!
ReplyDelete