Monday, May 29, 2017

Training Blog May 22 to 28, 2017

Monday AM road 4 with Uta, 28:04

Tuesday PM 7.2 miles around Phillips Academy, first 5 miles with Uta and Melissa, this felt pretty good.

Wednesday PM 5.2 miles on roads with Uta in 34:29.  Uta was more into this one than I was...

Thursday PM 8.2 on the roads in the rain with Uta, nice run, 52:03, planned strides for tonight but was getting pretty cold/tight by the time I finished up so I decided to skip them.

Friday PM road 5 mile solo, gave Uta the evening off, 32:41

Saturday AM at Chelmsford rail trail, 3.1 mile warm up, strides- this felt really excellent, all between 4:20 and 4:35 pace but felt easy and smooth, 2 mile tempo- this felt less excellent, aerobically ok but my quads were a bit burny by the end and my HR looks to have been through the roof, for what the watch hr is worth, 10:22 (5:13, 5:09), 3.4 miles cool down

Sunday PM I was in VT for a memorial for my Brother and slipped in a jog on the AT, I planned on 5 but this was pretty hilly single track and so after 25 mins, and according to the Garmin 1.88 miles, I turned around, I would guess it was longer than that given the dense tree cover and very windy nature of the trail but probably not all that much longer...

Summary 43 miles for the week, give or take.  One light workout.  I'm finally to the point where I was willing to write myself a bit of a schedule.  In general I am addicted to having a plan and following a schedule.  I'm pretty good about listening to my body and making adjustments to that schedule as needed.  I would guess I only follow it to the letter in somewhere between 1 week out of 5 to 1 week out of 10 but I do feel that having a plan, knowing how the workouts need to progress and what workouts are going into the overall mix keeps me from training out of balance or from getting caught up in training for training sake.   That said early in a comeback things are so touch and go I find that plans cause nothing but complications, disappointments and artificial barriers.  Far better to just have a general sense of what you are trying to do, is today a recovery day or an increase day or a day I'm going to try to run a 'new' pace.  Then listen to the body.  Many runs I start in the early part of a comeback even as I start the run I don't know how far it is going to be.  I will head out with the intention of trying to run farther then my last 'push day' but that might mean doing 1 minute more or 2 miles more depending on how the body reacts and feels on the day.  I also always end up taking a day off that I don't want to take because I can feel the pressures building in the body and that I'm not as recovered on a given day as I should be before adding new stimulus.
  Beyond that I have continued with one to two Feldenkrais sessions per day for cross training.

2 comments:

Danny said...

Good to wake up and see you are running again Nate. Good to have you back.

Is their a big hole in your life when you can't run due to an injury?

Running is such a big part of my identity, that I feel less confident in who I am when I can't run.

Danny

nateruns@hotmail.com said...

Danny- I have a bunch of hobbies and can always be doing more prep for work so I don't end up feeling as lost as I did when my life was completely centered on running. That said running is my favorite part of the day. It is how I deal with stress and how I process my day. In the case of morning runs it is how I get the engine running and shake the sleep from my brain. So I am much more stressed when I don't run and I feel lethargic. I try to do other exercise, like yoga or even turning compost but honestly I don't enjoy them as much and they don't work quite as well. So I end up being grumpy and unpleasant. I also get fat pretty quickly. Which isn't good either.
-Nate