Monday, April 04, 2011 – AM: I woke up and my left calve was pretty sore. I ran over to Alumni fields and it took me a few minutes before I could run without a kink in my stride. It was a bit worrisome, but seemed to work itself out after a few minutes. By the end, it was much better.
The total run was 5M s/o in 39:49 on fields
AM2: Phase IV lift in Gantcher.
PM: The weather was miserable this afternoon – 40s and hard rain. I arrived in Gantcher ready to run outside but everyone else was in shorts and shirtless and starting to run around the indoor track. I chuckled a bit at the fact that we were running inside in April, but oh well. I ran with Murner and felt fine. We switched directions every 20 minutes or so. At one point we tried to go down and run in the cage for a change of scenery, but the softball girls were down there and we didn’t feel like getting hit with speeding projectiles.
I did a few laps in lane one to see how fast we were going (just under 7:00 pace for the majority).
The total run was 9M EZ in 63:30.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011 – AM: I woke up this morning feeling very stiff and tired. I had gotten up to pee in the night and had a lot of soreness in my left calve – on the outside, along the tendon that runs parallel to the shin. It was pretty stiff and sore when I woke up and it took me a few minutes to be able to run without favoring it. I jogged down to the track and ran around the grass to shake out. It felt okay by the end, but boy was it stiff at first… A pretty nice morning other than that. Almost 60F and clear.
The total run was 4M s/o in 32:33.
PM: I had an exam this morning but was able to rest a bit after lunch. The weather looked nasty for the afternoon – rainy, windy, and in the mid 40s. I saw that there was a break in the storm front coming through around 2:30pm, so I decided to start my run early in hopes of getting in a few miles before it got too nasty.
It’s hard weather to dress for, but this ended up working pretty well: I wore my thinnest tights, a spandex top and my rain coat, with a wool hat and warm gloves. I ran to Gantcher to drop my stuff off and then did another 2M+ solo down towards the fells and back on Boston Ave. I had done about 24min of running by the time I got back to Gantcher around 3:05pm and met up with the guys to head out. Matt wanted to do about 7M, so I figured that would put me in the 10M+ range, which was where I wanted to be.
On the way out, Nick said to me “you know you’re going to be really hot in that, right?” I actually had been pretty warm the first few miles, but I didn’t mind being a little over-heated. However, as we headed out, the temperature seemed to drop and the rain seemed to pick up. Matty and I ran across campus and out toward Arlington to do Spy Pond. It was raining pretty hard by the time we got to Teele Square and it was quite chilly. I was almost cold in my raincoat and tights and poor Matt was in a t-shirt and shorts.
Before we got to Mass Ave, Matt said “I’m not going to make it – I’ve gotta head back.” At first, I thought he meant he just wasn’t feeling well. It was loud and he said something about being sick. It turns out he was just too cold and didn’t want to stay out since he was already coming down with something – definitely a wise call. So, we headed back to campus so he could get a coat. By the time we got to Anderson, it was really coming down and he told me he was just going to finish up inside. I figured since I was already out here and wet, I might as well finish up outside. (Plus, I was really not excited about two days of Gantcher miles in a row).
At this point, we’d run about 45 minutes, so I figured 3M on C-Loop would bring it up to 9M. I got back to Gantcher in ~64 minutes, came inside, and took off all my wet stuff. Luckily, I had stashed some dry socks and shirt inside before practice.
I did full-full barefoot drills on the blue mats – these felt pretty solid. Afterwards, I put on my tumbes spikes and did some strides.
I did the first 3x by myself and did 100m on/100m off. After this, I joined Sam Haney and Connor on theirs. It was nice to have company on my strides and I was actually feeling really good by the end. This was the first day since Princeton that I’ve felt like I’ve had some snappiness back in my legs. I think it’s good that we bumped the workout to tomorrow though. I should be feeling decent by then.
Anyways, I rolled out and stretched a bit. My calve that had bugged me this morning didn’t bother me at all during the run. I still rolled/massaged it a bunch after practice to be safe. Finally, I put my (soggy wet) trainers back on and jogged back to Lewis with Sam before dinner.
The total run was 10M+++ EZ/Mod in 74:26 (~6:40 pace for most) w/ full drills and 8x good strides in Tumbes.
PM2: After Alpinismo and some studying, at 8:30pm I did Core – 100s, 50s, 30x side dip, 100x squiggle, 30x reach up, 30x toes to sky, 4:30 plank, 50x leg lift. Felt good. The plank is a good place to practice mental toughness.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - AM: I woke up naturally a bit before 8:00am this morning. My calve was bugging me a bit as I got up and walked around on it. It seems to be that it gets stiff after I sleep on it, as it’s really only bothered me in the mornings. I did a bit of jogging around Lewis, just to try to loosen it up a bit. I could tell that even after a few minutes of jogging it was starting to feel better. After this, I did some foot drills – not the latter half very dynamic ones – and then jogged over to breakfast.
PM: Our workout got changed at the last minute today. Originally, we were going to run 3x3x800m with short rest, but instead we were now running 2x5x600m with 60 sec rest and 3:30 between sets. At first, I was kind of frustrated at the short intervals and the short overall volume, but it ended up being a tougher workout than it looked on paper.
I jogged over to the track after class and did a nice easy warm-up by myself. It was pretty nice out, with temperatures around 50-55F, but clouds were moving in and it was VERY windy (15-20MPH steady) along the home straight. I warmed up for about 30 minutes and came back and switched into my Tumbes spikes. I want to work on staying up on my toes and making my calves stronger, so I’m going to try to do most of my VO2 work in spikes from here on.
I did half-rep drills and only a couple strides since everyone else were ready to go already. I was supposed to be running with Nick and we were aiming for 71.x (1:46.5-1:48). Matt was also running with us but he was shooting for 70s.
These felt pretty fast from the get-go. I’m not sure if it’s the lack of work at this pace or if I’m just not quite as well recovered as I thought I was, but it felt pretty lousy out there today. Nick was trying hard to stick with Matty and I was trying hard to stick on Nick, but a lot of the time this meant we would go out in like 33.x and I would feel that by 400m and fall off. The first 3 were okay – definitely felt tougher than I expected, but not too bad. When I ran 1:51 on the 4th, I was a bit frustrated and I think I lost it for a bit mentally.
I was also a bit pissed off because after that rep, Nick and Matt just took off on the next one without me. I had just spaced out a bit and missed the 60 second mark and so I ended up doing #5 solo.
I tried to stay a bit more in the game on the second 5. I tried to focus on tucking in behind Nick and trying to draft for as long as I could. The wind made it really brutal – especially since we had to run into the wind twice on half of them.
Anyways, I kept it under control. I ran 1:51 again on the second #4 which was frustrating, but I came back and ran 1:48 for the next one. (NB – thinking about it now, both 1:51s were on the stretch where we were into the wind twice, so that actually makes me feel a lot better about the effort).
After the 10x600m, we took 3:00 easy jog and then did 3x200m. I ran the first one solo in 30.9, took 2:00 easy jog, and then ran the second one with Nick in 29.7. I did one more, hoping to run a bit faster and ran 30.7 solo and called it a day.
I did a 3M cool-down afterwards, starting out with the 4:30 group while they were warming up and then finished solo. I felt pretty decent, but my calves were quite sore afterwards. Some stretching and rolling and then off to Dewick.
All in all, it was a mediocre workout. I averaged 1:48.3 for the 10x600m, which is a bit slower than I’d hoped for, and it felt harder than I wanted it to. The workout didn’t look too hard on paper, but the very short rest and the wind made it tough. I also just felt like I haven’t worked out at this pace much (at all) recently. Most of my VO2 workouts have been more like 73s, not 71s, so it was a bit of a shock to the system running that quick. My legs also just didn’t quite feel 100% today.
I’m not worried at this point, but it definitely makes running 14:5x or 15:0x seem pretty intimidating right now. I’m hoping that a couple more good workouts at this pace will help make it seem more reasonable.
Splits:
1:46.8
1:46.8
1:47.1
1:51.8
1:49.1 - solo
3:30 jog
1:46.4
1:47.1
1:47.9
1:51.4
1:48.3
3:00 jog
30.9
2:00 jog
29.7
2:00 jog
30.7
Average: 1:48.3
Thursday, April 07, 2011 – AM: I woke up this morning and my calve was pretty tight and stiff again. It took a good 5 minutes of warming up before I could really run on it without a serious kink in my stride. I jogged over to the alumni fields and ran around there for a while. It did loosen up and felt a lot better by the end, but was still not quite right. I did 3 big laps on the grass and then headed inside to lift. After this, I jogged back to Lewis before some quality time with the roller and some good static stretching.
The total run was 4M s/o in 33:03.
AM2: In Gantcher, I did the Phase IV Lift, mostly on the varsity side of the gym. Everything felt good. The calve felt better afterwards. The lift was 3 sets of[dips (30-35), 10x seated row @40lb, 10x push up, 7x chin up, 8x RDL each foot, 8x quad extension @80lb, 15-20x side crunches, 15-20x shooters, 15-20x suitcases, 20x lunge walk].
PM: I had lab this afternoon and I was hoping that Murner would wait for me to run. We had talked about running ~12M together and I was hoping I’d have some company. He texted me and told me that he was going at 3:00, though, and I was still in lab, so I ended up goin’ solo.
I was feeling pretty tired when I left lab. Having to stand up for 2+ hours is not great right before a run. Anyways, I was thinking of canning the longer run and the quicker end I had thought of as I headed out. I figured I would run to the river and see how I felt from there. If I felt really terrible, I’d just run 6-8M and call it a recovery day. If I felt really good, I’d do what I’d originally intended - ~12M w/ some quicker running at the end.
I felt pretty lousy the first couple of miles. My stride still wasn’t perfect and I was still not landing quite right on my left leg. As I progressed though, I tried to relax and once I got into it, I actually started to feel pretty decent and smooth. The first 3M down to the river were about 6:55 pace and I then picked it up a bit to ~6:45 for the next few miles.
I crossed the bridge at Mass Ave and came back on the Cambridge side. I felt pretty good at this point and just tried to feel relaxed. For the second half of the run, I averaged about 6:30 pace and it felt quite comfortable.
I came back the long way from Harvard and got back to the track in 1:17:12. At this point, I was feeling decent enough that I decided I might as well try to the quicker ending I had planned and see how the pace felt. I took about 60 seconds to change into my Peer flats and then started on the track.
I ran the first 200m ~38 and it felt a lot easier than I had expected. I slowed down to the pace I wanted to hit (80s) and was very consistent for the remainder of the run. Every lap was 79.h or 80.l. It felt quite comfortable too. I kept this up for 4000m, running the last lap more like 10k effort in 75.5. This ended up coming out to 13:15.5 for 4000m and felt quite comfortable – exactly what I was hoping for.
I jogged one more easy mile after this to cool down a bit and then rolled and stretched a bit. I had to leave pretty quickly because it was like 5:45pm by the time I finished running and I had class at 6:00pm. I scarfed down a bagel and some Gatorade on the way to class and didn’t get to eat dinner until like 7:30pm. Long day!
The total run was 1:37:00 for 15M, 6:28 pace. The 4000m of work at the end was 13:15.5 (5:19.9 pace)
11.5M 1:17:12
14M: 1:30:27 - 4000m: 13:15.5 (79.4, 80.4, 79.9, 79.9, 80.6, 79.8, 80.1, 79.9, 80.0, 75.5)
15M: 1:37:00
Friday, April 08, 2011 – AM: I went to bed at 10pm last night and pulled my shade down, so I managed to sleep until after 8:30am. Once up, I was glad to find my calve was not as sore as it’s been the last couple of mornings. I texted Prescott that I was up and would meet him at his house for a shakeout.
The weather said it was 41F out, so I wore underarmor top, a tech shirt, and yellow wind breaker with medium tights and a hat and mittens. It ended up feeling a lot warmer than that because it was really sunny, so I ended up ditching the wind-breaker at Prescott’s house.
The first couple minutes were still a bit stiff and awkward, but I felt pretty much fine after 5 minutes or so. Much better than yesterday.
Prescott and I had a nice easy run around C-Loop; it was nice to have company on a morning run. When we were on the other side of campus, near that school by Curtis street, we ran into J-Rags and so we all teamed up for the remainder of the run. It was fun and good to catch up with Jeff. We ran Prescott back to his house and the I ran Jeff back to Ossipee. From there, I tacked on another loop around the horn and came back to Lewis.
The total run was 46:14 for just under 6M.
PM: I headed out towards the Fells with Nick and Brunk. I ran with them for a few miles but once we got into the Fells, I really had to take a piss, so I stopped and they went off without waiting. I was okay with this, though, as it was a nice day to run alone in the Fells. The calve was still not perfect and I could still feel a bit of a kink in my stride.
Afterwards, I tacked on some running on the grass around the infield and then did full foot drills in socks. I felt better by the end, but still not perfect.
The total run was 8M++ in 65:57, with drills
PM2: Core – 100s, 50s, 30x side dip, 30x cherry pickers, 30x toes to sky, 5:00 plank, 30x Kenyan, 50x leg lift
Saturday, April 9, 2011 – AM: I had trouble falling asleep last night. I think I need to stop doing core so close to bed-time; it seems to keep my heart rate up and makes it difficult to fall asleep. That and the fact that it’s Friday night and there’s a good amount of noise to deal with. Anyways, once I fell asleep, I slept alright. I woke up naturally around 7:20am and tried to stay asleep until 8:30 or so.
At that point, I got up and my left calve was pretty sore again. I did a bit of light jogging to warm it up and then did FULL full foot-drills in the grass outside of Lewis. It felt a lot better by the end but was still a bit tweaked. Afterwards, I jogged over to Dewick for breakfast.
PM: I had a pretty frustrating day. I had to spend most of the day in Anderson fixing shit that was someone else’s job and that I don’t really know how to do. Argh. I met up with my parents briefly to drop off some shoes that I accidentally had shipped to the house. After this, I found I was really tired and took a nice nap for a half hour or so. I then did some work on my EMID write-up and headed out to do my workout around 4pm.
I jogged down to Baronian to drop off my flats and bottle and then headed over to Alumni fields to warm up on the grass. I was actually feeling pretty decent. My stride felt almost 100% and I felt pretty good in terms of energy. I did about 4M total back to the track and then did half-rep foot drills on the grass (in socks). I then changed into my Peer flats, did 4x 100m strides and got ready to go.
The original workout I had in mind for today was a pretty tough one: 2x5000m@tempo, 1x3200m @10k with the rest being 600m run at easy pace (~7:00). This would end up being 9M total including the rest. I was hoping that the 2M at the end would simulate the last 2M of a 10k and trying to stay tough when already pretty tired. Dan had assigned us a simple 6M steady tempo, but I thought this workout might be better suited for me.
Things started off fine. I was hoping to run the first 5k pretty comfortably at half marathon pace (80s) and then run the second one a bit quicker (78-79) and finally run the last 2M at 75-76s. I went out and ran 79.1, 78.7 for the first two laps and it didn’t feel too bad. The wind had picked up a bit and there was a pretty solid headwind on the home stretch. As the laps progressed, I found myself consistently slowing down on the home stretch.
The first mile felt pretty good and I ran 5:18.5. After that, though, things started to go downhill quickly. The next mile I was hitting 80-81 and then the wheels really started to fall off. The third mile, I was running 83-84s and it felt pretty hard. This was pretty embarrassing and I kind of lost it here mentally.
I actually managed to bring the pace back down a bit in the 4th mile, but it didn’t last. I was working way harder than it felt and by the time I got to the 5th mile and was running 85s, I decided to stop.
I jogged one lap easily and then tried to run a mile at 10k pace. I came through 200m in 37-38 and it felt really hard. I came through 400m in 77-78 and decided to stop. I really hate cutting workouts and runs in general and in the few years I’ve been a runner, there haven’t been many times that I’ve done this. However, when it comes down to getting another mile or so of lousy quality in or not, in a situation like this, I think the wise move is to cut short. If I’m running this slowly, there is an underlying reason for it, generally that my body is not ready to work out and I’m not recovered from the previous session(s). Thus, working extra hard to push out one more (slow) mile is entirely counter-productive, setting myself back farther. The real problem is that I came into the workout without being properly recovered. This is probably why I rarely have to cut workouts – because I try to take my recovery very seriously and I almost never start a workout that I don’t think I can finish.
Anyways, I was very frustrated, but it was a beautiful day, so I tried to make the best of it. I did a nice easy cool-down on Lakes and that felt nice.
Splits:
4M w/u
Drills, 4x100m strides
5M Tempo in 27:28
79.1
78.7
80.6
80.1 (5:18.5)
81.5
80.9
81.7
81.8 (10:44.5 – 5:26.0)
83.7
83.4
84.7
84.5 (16:20.7 – 5:36.2)
83.1
82.9
81.9
83.4 (21:52.1 – 5:31.4)
83.7
85.2
85.3
81.9 (27:28.2 – 5:36.1)
4M Cool down
Sunday, April 10, 2011 – AM: I went home last night to try to get a good night’s sleep and to do my long run with Mr. C in the morning. I woke up feeling pretty lousy – I still didn’t sleep too well. I had some breakfast and my calve was still pretty sore when I woke up. I did a bit of jogging around the house and then tried to warm it up on the elliptical for about 10 minutes. After this, I headed outside to see if it would feel better after a couple easy miles. I ran for about 3M out and back and there was still a slight kink my stride. I came back and after a lot of hemming and hawing, I decided not to try to do a long run in the morning, but to rest it and wait until the afternoon when I’ve generally felt better. Instead, I just got a bunch of work done.
PM: Around 2:00pm, I headed out with Mr. C to do an easy shakeout. After talking with Nick, I had decided not to attempt a long run, but to just get some easy running in if I felt good. I was feeling goodb at this point, with no limping, so I decided to go out and test it out.
I started out with a couple of miles very easy with Mr. C on foot (~9:00 pace or something). After that, we looped back to the house and he got on the bike and we did another 45 minutes or so at an easy-moderate pace. I ran without a watch, but had a general idea of how far we were going.
The total run was ~10M in 70-80 minutes.
PM2: Before dinner, around 5pm, I did core – 100s, 50s, 30x bird dog, 30x toes to sky, 30x calve raises, 30x side dip, 5:30 plank, 50x leg lift. I did 12minutes on the elliptical to warm up and 18min after to cool down. Feeling better.
Total for the Week: 100 Miles in 11 Runs
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