Sunday, April 08, 2007

Miles, Miles and More Miles (eggs, eggs & more eggs)

This was the highest (non race week) mileage week in a real long time.

Monday:
Zero, I take most Mondays off. Usually because of a Race or Double from the weekend.
Tuesday:
2.4 miles, I did a hill workout on the treadmill. It always seems like I've been on it for hours, then I look down and I 'm just getting to a half a mile.
Wednesday: 7.1
Tempo run. In preparation for Mt Si 50 miler, I'm trying to teach my legs to run at the same slow pace (about 6.2 mph) on flat or on the ups or downs. Except for a few seconds here and there, I ran between 6.2 & 7 mph the whole way. I put an Aerobics DVD in before I went running so I could jump into it without letting my heart rate drop. And as soon as I ran in the door, Jenn and I did 40 minutes of hardcore cardio and boot camp aerobics. Avg. 6.0 mph.
Thursday: 6.1
Another Tempo run. This time I set my watch to beep annoyingly at me whenever I went too fast or slow. My speed was much more controlled (no 8.3 mph like yesterday)Avg. 6.1 mph. Time 59:59.1 (I said I'd be back in an hour ;)
Friday: 0
Zero miles but I did spend 9 hours on my feet watching the kids so Jenn could go to the office for a day off. I need to do this more often. My feet were killing me!
Saturday: 18.4 up at 4:30 am!
I wanted to run 2 tempo laps around the lake but I had 2 egg hunts to go to and I didn't want to run it in the dark, again. So I came up with a split workout. After what seemed like a just few minutes of sleep, I got up and headed out onto the Cedar River Trail that goes right past my house. Somehow I got a late start (maybe I fell asleep while putting my shoes on?) and couldn't finish 10 miles on time unless I sped up, which I didn't want to do, so I turned around short and headed home. I did stop to read a new sign that I noticed a few days earlier.




This part of the trail floods from blocked drains, a lot, I'm glad they are fixing it.


At around 7 3/4 miles it was 6:30 and it seemed pretty light out. Light enough for the Tiger gate to be open. I hope it will be next weekend. I finished up before 7, ran in the house, grabbed my keys, no licence or wallet, said hi and goodbye to everyone, and drove up to Lake Youngs for the second half of my run. Same plan as before except here there are actual hills, not just 2 or 3 degree inclines. The beeping watch really kept me on track. I dipped below 5 mph 4 times, 2 were on hills but only for a few seconds and 2 were for a quick nature call. Funny thing, looking at my heart rate graph it looks a lot like the altitude graph. I finished the last 2 hills really having to push to keep the pace. My HR got up to 170. Stats for the run; Avg speed 6.2 mph or 9.50 m/m, highest speed 7.7 mph (it's so hard to go that slow on the downhills). This was a great run for me, opposite but great. I normally slow way down going up the hills and fly going down, it's much more fun that way. I arrived back at the house with just enough time to take an ice bath and get ready for the days festivities.
Sunday: 12
Jenn & I headed out the door at 6:30 to do another 2 laps around the lake. After dropping the 3 kids off at Granny's we started running just before 7 am. We did the usual run walk, easy pace that we always do. Even though it had rained the night before the trail was still in great shape. The only mud was on the eastern half of the loop. Jenn's been progressing well with her ability to go further and further. Today was not to be one of those days. Her knee was bothering her so we quit at 12 miles. She ended up doing more miles on the treadmill later. We could have stayed and gone a bit slower but I had to get home to put the Turkey in the oven. We had 16 people coming over for dinner. Of course I ate way too much. Everything was just soooo good!


Total: 46






This Pix was while waiting to have their faces painted. You can see Arthur didn't want anything to do with it. While the other two couldn't wait to get painted. Jessica was excited it was going to be blue. It didn't matter what it was as long as it was blue!

3 comments:

Tony C said...

Arthur, it sounds like your Saturday run was the best yet. You SHOULD focus on the uphills and not the downhills because that's your weakness. For Mt Si, of course, that's not an issue. Also, your marathon times are not reflective of your strength and your ultra times (50K trail times) in my opinion. I think you should be running marathons faster. But, maybe you don't care about that. If you do, you should focus on "real" tempo runs which are run closer to your 10K pace. That will help you to increase your turn over rate. Additionally, "track" workouts (that dang 5 letter word that I hate), will help with that. Ultimately though, your marathon pace (mp) runs of 15 - 23 miles will do you the best in the 'long run.'

Eventually, if you are able to, you should slow down and increase your weekly base. I did that for close to 3 years (2001-2003), getting my mpw up to 75-80, and then worked on my speed again (2003-2005), while decreases my mpw to 60-65. In 2005, I had great success in marathon (3 under 3:10) and ultras. I was hoping to up my mileage while maintaining my speed in 2006, but that should have been a 'rest' year by plan. Instead, I was running somewhat injured. White River 50 was really my only good race.

This year I'm building again. I can run 80 miles in a given week without much trouble. As long as I keep stretching and doing lateral exercises, I'm ok (wasn't stretching enough before/after Chuck-n-Pac and got the sore hammy for it). Now I just need to remember my own rule - don't increase mileage and try to maintain speed at the same time. I feel slow even though the mileage makes me strong and hence a little bit fast because of it. I haven't done a tempo run in over a year. I want to be able to do that 'cause I love running 9-12 miles on the road really fast. Patience Grasshopper!

Journey to a Centum said...

Wow! tc said it all. Looks like you had a fun Easter with your family. Hope the kids got lot's of eggs.

Per your comment on my blog, I used the word if for drama. The word quit is not in my vocabulary. See you at Tiger!

Olga said...

Hey, we got a free coaching advice (myself including)! Very cute picture:)