May 25th, 2009 – Half Marathon Training Long Run

Today is Memorial Day and yet I’m still running.  I knew I would have times where this new regimen and my life would clash, but I also knew that after 5 days of running in a row, I could not easily handle doing it again this week.  I have firmly held, though, that there will be no strength training of any sort on the long run day.  I just beat myself up too badly to try to tackle both.

I decided this time to add just a quarter mile of cool down to the run.  I need some amount of time to ramp down after a run this size, but I did deliberately ignore the warm up.  I don’t know what that’s going to mean for my injury risk, but we’ll have to see.

Once again, my body really surprised me.  I never even approached zone 4 or anaerobic threshold for this run, and I didn’t have to make any adjustments to the slope or the pace.  The first run, I had to lower the incline to eventually flat and had to slow down to below the pace average to keep my heart rate down and it still wouldn’t get out of zone 4.  This run, I was close, but it really stayed below even 170.  I just don’t understand what the difference really is and each of these runs has amazed me.  I’m completing the distance above pace as well, which means that I’m probably doing myself more to make my goal than the goal the regimen promises.  That is motivating as well.

Housekeeping:  10.25 miles in 1:29:41 for a pace of 8:42 per mile.  Of course, the last quarter mile I walked at a 15:00 per mile pace, so it drug the average down, but my target was 8:46 anyway so I still managed to beat it with a quarter mile of walking!  1169 total calories burned.  That gives me an indication that at some point in the very near future, I’m going to have to adjust my diet.  I haven’t tried to cut any of the weight I took on after vacation, instead focusing on getting the fat percentage back down and building up more lean muscle mass.  But, if my base metabolic rate is 2043 calories, with activity at 2656, adding a 1100 calorie average workout will mean I should be eating 3700 calories on long run days and I’m not close just yet.  Just something to have to keep an eye on really.

I am looking forward to the day of rest.  I have to do speed work this week, and since I’ve never done it before, I don’t know what to expect.  I do know the pace is faster than I’ve run long distances to this point, but slower than I’d run during some of my cardiac training.  Just something to look forward to!

Cheers!

May 23rd 2009 – Half Marathon Training Easy Run

5 runs in a row!  I cannot believe I actually set myself up for this.  Of course, part of it was so that I didn’t have to leave the house alone to go run on Colleen’s birthday, but it was really rough convincing myself to get to the gym for this 5th run!  I haven’t been at the gym 5 days in a week in quite some time.  I hadn’t really wanted to be at the gym 5 days a week, but this program set up that way and I’m really trying to follow it closely.  I’m not exactly worried about the half marathon, but I’m also not competing just for the sake of completing the distance.  I want to feel like I’m really accomplishing more than just saying I can run 13.1 miles.

Strength training today was more than anything the hard part of today’s training.  I’m definitely going to be more in tune to the strength training part, and have also made a determined effort to have that include some core training.  That means abdominal work, which I obviously need.  Still, having backed down to the smaller dumbbells again has shown that my strength had diminished slightly and the soreness in my chest and stomach a true indicator that I need to pay more attention to my upper body.

5 minutes in zone 3 in this run.  That’s up only slightly from the last easy run, and again not at all worrisome for me.  It crossed over just barely and really never reached anaerobic threshold, which was all I was worried about.

Housekeeping:  6.0 miles in 53:38 for an 8:56 average pace.  617 total calories burned.  For 5 days of running, I managed 34.3 miles total and 4291 calories consumed.  Pretty good I’d say.

Just one day of rest, though, before I have to get back to another long run!  I will be interested in how this next 10 miler goes.

Cheers!

May 22nd, 2009 – Half Marathon Training Tempo Run

From what I can interpolate from the training regimen, the tempo run is the run that’s supposed to acclimate my body to what will eventually be the race pace I’m reaching for.  The run explicitly calls out warm up and cool down components, where I’m covering 4 miles in the middle at my tempo pace.  The goal was 7:23 per mile.  Now, this is another annoyance or oddity in the training anyway.  The treadmill doesn’t support less than increments of .1 miles per hour and only establishes paces in terms of miles per hour.  The target goal was 8.13 miles per hour.  So, the question becomes, do I round down or up?  I have chosen up for all of these as the program actually is 38 seconds slower than my personal goal for the race, so I figure tweaking it to rounding up all the time makes more sense to achieving my aim.

This pace is roughly where I ran my first 10K back in February.  That should in theory mean I can easily complete this run without much issue.  Of course, that’s before I did whatever I did to my body that it forgot how to run. :-(  The run did come off without a hitch.  I had three minutes in zone 4 at the very end of the 4 miles, which shouldn’t really have happened, but it was just over the edge into zone 4, not like I was really struggling, so I wasn’t really concerned.  For all I know, part of it may have been me whisper singing to the Nano, which I am prone to do when I really get into a song that comes on.

Housekeeping:  6.0 miles in 49:30 for a pace of 8:15 per mile.  626 calories burned.  This is still fewer calories compared to the first easy run, and it just shows that my body really has remembered something it hadn’t had to recall until now.  I’m excited by the premise as it means when it comes time to really push my body, it should be ready.  I think my mind is definitely in the right place and I am excited to see what the rest of this program holds.

Cheers!

May 21st, 2009 –Half Marathon Training Easy Run

Another easy run today.  Not really much to report on it.  My body has adjusted to running again, almost like a trip hammer.  I don’t really understand how or why, but I’m back to my heart rate being back where it should be for this sort of pace.  My muscles ache, some due to the strength training, some due to the 10 mile run, some due to a lack of flexibility that I still cannot get past.  All in all, though, my heart rate was back where I expected it to be.  I only got into zone 3 for about 7 and a half minutes and that at the very end of the run.  That’s where it should be.  When I was running in the cardiac training, this pace was close to what I’d warm up at, which was leaving me in zone 1 for 5 minutes.

I still don’t quite understand the mechanics of these training sessions.  There’s no indication of a warm up or a cool down, just the pace and total mileage for the run.  I could obviously make those two components part of the total miles, but that seems to change the nature of the run.  I’d have to run much faster in the middle to make portions of the run much below the pace, so instead I’m just adding distance onto each side of the run.  That means instead of the 5 miles it states, I’m actually doing 6.  I don’t know how that will affect the overall program, but I just have become so accustomed to doing a warm up and cool down that I cannot escape the need for it psychologically.

Housekeeping:  6 miles in 55:10 for a pace of 9:11 per mile.  579 calories burned!  That is an amazing number to me.  The pace for the run yesterday was 6 seconds slower, and burned 70 more calories.  It is almost as though my body remembered I was in better shape.  I don’t know how to explain it.  It gave me hope though that this training will pay off in dividends when it comes race time.

One last bit of tangential information.  My feet no longer have any issues.  Damned shoes!  I guess that was one painful lesson to learn.  I’m just glad I got it all resolved before I took on a race of this distance.  I don’t know how I would have handled the blisters for 13 miles!

Cheers!

May 20th, 2009 – Half Marathon Training Easy Run

The new training regimen has me running three days a week in what it terms an easy run.  The one thing that seems most interesting to me is that the easy run isn’t slower, it is just fewer miles.  It stays on the same pace as the long run throughout the training program, so from a race perspective, it is just shorter.  That’s an odd premise for me yet again as easy runs had always been about slower pace to keep my heart rate in lower registers.  Should be an interesting 16 weeks to say the least.

I still have not quite determined the best method to handling warm up and cool down phases.  The running program doesn’t mention them on most of the runs and those that do specifically call out the total distance is to include warm up and cool down.  So, I’m sort of skirting the program to give myself some time for warm and cool, if only because it was part of my routine before now.  I’ll see how it goes.  In theory, for warm, I can just run slower for the first bit, assuming I pick up my pace in later miles to “catch up” the average mile pace.  That seems less valuable though, as I really want to get into a groove with a single pace.

Housekeeping:  6.0 miles in 55 minutes for an average pace of 9:17.  The 5 miles I needed to run at 8:46 was met, just that my warm up and cool down were below that average and thus dragged the overall pace down.  648 calories burned.  Not a bad workout, honestly.  The run itself was tough at first.  My legs were still smarting from the 10 miles the previous day and even with some stretching beforehand I was still feeling the burn.  But, after a bit I got into the groove.  It even turned out that I never got into zone 4 for this run.  That seemed interesting to me, because the total run was 55 minutes, and during the 10 miles, by the 43rd minute I was pretty much stuck in zone 4.  I didn’t even have to adjust the incline for this run.  If I had to guess, I would say it is because my body has at least mostly recovered and knew that I was in better shape than the first run.  I’ll be interested to see during next week’s 10 miles.

I did strength training after the run.  I am determined to get this back into my regimen 3 times a week, though I’m doing twice to start until I get readjusted.  I am also trying to get some core strength training in, but I hate doing crunches, feel pretty self conscious about doing them on the open floor, and have been told by several of the trainers that the machines are the wrong way to handle it.  So, I struggled with what I could do and I just tell myself with patience and time it will improve.  I can only hope that it’ll be less of a strain to get back into this routine.  I know that it is important to strength train, but I’m balancing the time at the gym with the time with my family and that seems more important.

Cheers!

May 19th, 2009 – Half Marathon Training Long Run

Today marked the first day of the official shift in my training to focusing on the half marathon.  I chose to try out a program through runnersworld.com that took in my last 10K time and created a somewhat custom program for me.  It is only 16 weeks in length, though, which means it expects me to run my race on September 6th.  Not sure how I’ll adjust that part of it, but I’m still 15 weeks from that point anyway, so I have some time to figure it out.

10 miles.  I keep repeating that to myself.  10 miles.  It seems a huge distance suddenly.  There had been times in my earlier training where I’d gotten just over 9 miles, but those days also seem an eternity away from now.  I suppose now is the time I should mention that for the first time, I’m changing the constant in my training.  As I stated early on I’d been keeping time as a constant and trying to shift distance to create my velocity.  The new program, though, uses distance as the constant and allows time to shift as needed.  This creates a shifting velocity as well, but it can also mean significantly longer times running than I’m accustomed to in my training.  It also means that I’m no longer fixated on keeping my heart rate in a specific zone.  I’m still using the Polar to track how I handle the running, but the goal now is to see how my cardiac system responds under these kinds of stresses.  The thing that really motivated me to use this program was that it actually said that at the end of this program, I’d be able to run my half marathon in 1:35:37.  That’s 38 seconds slower than I want as my goal anyway, so it definitely puts me in the right spot and if I tweak it just a tad, I might be able to make my target on the first try.

Housekeeping:  10.25 miles in 1:26:48 for a pace of 8:56 per mile, 1234 calories.  Now, the target pace was 8:46 for 10 miles.  That’s 6.84 miles per hour and treadmills only increment in 10ths of a mile.  That means I probably should have set the pace at 6.9.  I ran the first half mile at 10:00 per mile or 6.0 MPH.  I then ran the next 55 minutes at 8:34 or 7 MPH and then went down to 8:49 per mile or 6.8 MPH for the remaining run.  Once I’d crossed 10 miles, I slowed to 15:00 per mile or 4 MPH and then 20:00 per mile or 3.0 MPH until I had made the last .25 miles.  For the 10 miles, my pace was a 6.88 mile per hour average, or just faster than my target of 6.84.  A lot of math involved to get to that point, and I’ll skip those details, but for the first time I actually had to get out a spreadsheet to figure out if I’d made my target.  Thankfully, I did.  I had to adjust the incline, and I’m ambivalent as to whether or not that was cheating.  I was struggling and I wasn’t going to slow down but I had to do something to attempt to get my heart rate to slow even a bit.  I still wound up running 45 minutes in zone 4, which means it was all carbohydrates for energy and that I’ll have lactic acid soreness tomorrow.  I was more annoyed that twice during the run, my monitor dropped off, saying it no longer could read my heart rate and that caused me to pause the run long enough to readjust the strap.  Sometimes, I think the equipment is more hassle than it is worth.  Still, it helps me get a handle on what I’m doing to my body and I believe it will keep me from killing myself.

I am also weighing whether or not I should just adjust my workout to indicate that I need 5 minutes or a half mile of warm up and a quarter mile of cool down.  The program never mentions it unless it intends for me to include it in the run mileage totals.  Hard to say.  I do know I could probably adjust the warm up pace a bit which would allow me to run a bit slower at the end and still keep my total pace, but that also won’t get me that extra 37 seconds I’m hoping to shave off.  All hard to say.  I just know that I do have the physical ability to run 10 miles.  I also know that while I didn’t anticipate it, as I start adding in my strength training on easy run days, I’m going to have to adjust my diet.  In theory, I should have had almost 4000 calories today and I’m just not prepared to eat like that yet.  I also realize that unless things change, I’m cooking a LOT of carbohydrates, which means I’ve got to take in more.  That should be an interesting challenge.

Cheers!

May 10th, 2009 – Garner Catch Me if You Can 10K

Race Day!  I’m always nervous with anticipation when I get ready to run a race.  I don’t really have a running mentor, no race trainer, and no clue what I’m doing. LOL  This one was a pretty small race.  There were only 50 runners total in the 10K and that put my expectations pretty low as to how well I’d do.  I am too new to competitive running to know what a small race means in terms of the caliber of competition.  This race started EARLY!  I can understand why, after all it was in May in North Carolina.  By this time of year, it can be brutally hot and steamy by mid-morning and holding the race early allows it to be over early as well.  Still, that meant getting up at 4:45 AM to allow me the time to walk the dogs, get everyone up and be down there by 6:30 AM for a 7 AM race.  Colleen was competing in the 5K, which started at 7:05, so there wasn’t any chance I’d be done in time to let her run without the baby.

As we line up, I typically take the chance to size up my competition.  Sure enough, there seemed to be plenty of runners that would leave me in the dust.  Now, I try to keep perspective on it when I do this.  I’ve only been running since January of 2008, and only really competing in road races since November of 2008.  I can’t have any false belief that I’m going to win a race.  Most winners are running 10K races in 6 minute mile averages or faster.  I’m right now in the 6:55 to 7:15 range, given two races to establish that wide a gap. LOL  I would like to get to a point where I’m running at 6:45 or faster, but that still won’t put me in the winner’s circle.  So, I just like to find one runner and see if I can try to pace with them or just faster.  This time, though, I didn’t see anyone I thought would be a good person to “race” which only fed the belief that I was due for a butt kicking.

44:01.8!!  That’s not my personal record, which was 43:11 for the last race, but that wasn’t shabby considering I didn’t think I had anything for this race.  That was good enough for 9th overall and 3rd again in my age group.  The overall winner was 45, so I was the 4th fastest man in that age bracket, but by the rules, he doesn’t win both so I move up a spot.  I’ll take it.  That means now for 2 of my 3 10K races, I was in the top 3 for my age group.  That’s an impressive statement to me.  I was somewhat disappointed with my time, I left my kick until too late, but I finished strong.  I was in the end pleased with it, considering how I told myself I’d struggle.

Housekeeping:  6.2 miles in 44:01.8, for a 7:07 average mile.  596 calories burned.  Now, the calories burned is not something I’m typically paying attention to in the race, but since I have it, I include it here anyway.  The interesting thing for me in this race was that only at the very end when I did my kick did my heart rate get into zone 4.  That means I didn’t push myself hard enough, honestly, and that probably contributed to the slower pace.  I am full convinced now that most of this is mental and not physical.  I had enough gas to run hard at the end, I should have run harder sooner.  Lesson learned I suppose.

Now I’ll rest a few days and then get back into it.  I still have two weeks of this cardiac training program before I’m mostly on my own.  At that point, I have no idea what I’ll do, but I am hoping that in the next 5 months I have interesting experiences and will be ready to run this half marathon in November.  I’m already nervous about the distance.

Cheers!

May 6th, 2009 – 10K3

Ahh, 10K3.  Another concocted run on my part, but one that I consider an active recovery run.  It is all zone 2, which means it is a pretty short distance, and only an hour long, which means it isn’t a significantly long run either.  I like doing it as my last run before the race.  It’s more about listening to my body at that point and seeing exactly how much or little I can push myself while not really pushing.

The hole in the top of my left foot continues to weep terribly.  I don’t know what to do about it.  It won’t heal, because every shoe I wear has the potential to rub on it.  It isn’t infected, at least, so I’m not as worried about that part of it.  It is really just more an annoyance than anything for me at this time.  The one on my right foot never got this bad, so I don’t know if the foot pod being on this shoe caused it or if it was just worse to begin with.  I just know I’m bleeding into socks now and that can’t be a good thing. :-(  On top of that, I’ve felt a blister on my left heel!  What????  OK, I’m going to say that with the new lace effort, I’ve left the shoes too loose.  They aren’t built incorrectly, I can run in them, I’m just not doing well with either the thin socks or the laces.  I’m going to say it is a little of both.  The runner’s socks are very odd.  Maybe I shouldn’t use them and all of this becomes moot.  Hard to say.

Housekeeping:  6.4 miles in 60 minutes for a 9:22 per mile average.  660 calories burned.  I was surprised I’d gotten that close to 700, which I consider my 70 minute target, but I also know I’m hauling around those extra pounds and that should in theory mean I need to burn more calories.  The distance was only mildly annoying.  My pace never got above 8 minute miles, right at 7.5 miles per hour, which was a function of being in zone 2.  What was annoying was the duration of time at that pace before I had no choice but to slow it down.  I ran less than half of the work section a speeds slower than 8 minutes per mile and most of it back at 10 minutes per mile.  That’s really slow any more for me and it just shows that my body is not back to top shape.  Oh well, in the end I’ll get back to that level and once I put the weights back into the routine, I have no doubt I’ll burn off the extra weight or more accurately the excess fat and really get ready.

I’m excited and nervous about the race even though I think I’m likely going to do worse this race than the last one.  Possibly even worse than my first.  I just enjoy seeing how I stand, and the race is small enough that if I surprise myself, I could actually be one of the top 3 overall.  That would be so incredible.  I want more than just a three pack of racing socks for my prize. ROFL!

Cheers!

May 5th, 2009 – 10K5

Second taper race of the week.  This one is a creation of my own design.  There’s really no rhyme or reason to it.  I wanted a one hour total run and wanted in the work section to have half of the run in zone 2 and half in zone 3.  It makes for a much slower run overall, but then again, I’m only using it to taper now anyway, so I don’t want a fast or intense run.  Of course, with me still carrying around at least some extra weight, maybe I should be looking to run harder, but I also don’t want my dead legs to be even worse.

The run was nice in that my arches are healing quite nicely and there’s no indication that they’ll be torn up by these shoes.  The problem now seems to be the tops of my feet.  I finished the run and discovered that one spot had been rubbed so raw it bled into the sock!  HURL!  I’m not supposed to be this violent on myself.  I honestly can’t tell if these are new sores or were inherited from the old shoes.  I just know I’ve now got new spots on the top of my foot right where the tongue of the shoe would end that are ripped open and quite nasty looking.  The price I am paying for my mania!

Housekeeping:  7 miles in 60 minutes, an 8:34 per mile average.  727 calories burned.  7 miles in an hour isn’t bad at all, considering all but 25 minutes of that hour was in zone 2 or lower.  I’m still mildly concerned that my stamina isn’t what it was and I don’t know if it is dead legs (which is a made up condition I use to describe how they feel) or the extra pounds (it fluctuates, but I know I’m up 4 lbs since vacation and I don’t know where it went, LOL) or just the lack of activity.  I just like using the taper runs as a guide to how the race will go and these haven’t given me a lot of hope.

On the subject of the race……..the number of participants has now reached a point I’m no longer concerned they’ll cancel the race.  It is still much smaller than I’d expected (the half marathon I’m considering in November already has more confirmed entrants than the race in 4 days) but there are now 6 total in my age bracket.  That means I’ll have to really run the race if I want to win an award. LOL  Actually, I still just want to finish at the same pace I did for the last or slightly faster.  I would really still like my last 10K before the half marathon to be below 42 minutes total, which means I’ll need to shave off 10 or 11 seconds per mile to make that happen.  I don’t know if I truly can or not.

Cheers!

May 4th, 2009 – Zone 3

Well, this is the week before the next race.  I’m not feeling it.  I don’t know why, but it seems either my body is revolting due to the vacation, or because I’m carrying extra weight, or the threshold training has my muscles really sore, or even worse that because I mostly abandoned the strength training I’m no longer really burning fat correctly.  One of those, or some combination just has my legs feeling heavy.  So, it was with some angst that I got to the gym for this run.  I don’t think the next race will be a move in the right direction.  I’ve managed to shave pace off of each subsequent race, but I am now just setting my expectations to not lose pace for this one.

I still am not sure whether or not they’ll hold the race at all.  As of today (I’m posting this blog entry on Wednesday the 6th) there are only 26 confirmed entries and the race is on the 10th.  Since I’m a newcomer to the road racing circuit, I don’t really know what a break even point would be for a road race or whether that even comes into play.  I just know the race registration was set up to handle 1000 entrants and we’re not even at 10% full.  One thing I will say, though is that as it stands this minute, there are only three men in my age group and 11 total.  So, I could use statistics to show I was really doing well when in fact I’m probably doing terribly.  Saying I finished 10th among men sounds really awesome if you don’t know I was 10 out of 11, or I finished third in my age when there are only three in my age group which means I really finished last.  LOL

Housekeeping:  8.3 miles in 70 minutes, 8:26 per mile average; 922 calories burned.  I was disappointed to see that yet another battery was dead or dying in the foot pod and it only captured 7.5 miles of the total run.  I was also disappointed that this was my second zone 3 run since coming back from vacation where I didn’t get to 9 miles.  The regression is annoying because I’d really liked to have been pushing toward 10 miles.  Now I’m pushing back toward 9!  Oh well.  I am sure it will work itself out and I’ve got 5 months to get it all back into alignment.

Broke down over the weekend and bought a new pair of running shoes.  This time, I made sure to choose stability control.  The difference is stark.  I had no foot pain, no worries over foot pain.  I got a couple of raw spots on the top of my foot, but I don’t know if they are related to the new shoes or the old shoes.  I just looked down after the run and saw two really raw spots where the tongue was rubbing against my foot where it bends at the ankle.  Oh well, I don’t think these are serious and I’ll just watch how things develop as I work out the new shoes.  Boy are they comfortable!  That’s a lesson I’ll not soon forget.  I’m not an over or under pronating runner, but I need the stability control due to my flat feet.  I’ll use the other shoes when I do elliptical or biking, which I plan to incorporate into the marathon training.

Since I’m tapering, the rest of the runs this week will be shorter distances and slower overall. The next run is half zone 2, half zone 3 and the last run is all zone 2.  That will also mean I’m going to have to cut my calories on those days but I am not sure by how much.

Cheers!

May 1st, 2009 – Threshold 3

Of the three threshold training sections, this one is what I’d consider the easiest.  That’s an odd thing to say, honestly, because pushing my heart rate into zone 4 at all requires me to run faster than I’d ever considered possible, and it winds up being hard on my knees.  Of course, I’m still not sure if the knee issue is due to the shoes, or just that I’m really not doing myself justice with the way I train.  Eh, I don’t really know.

Threshold 3 though is easy because the zone 4 intervals are only 30 seconds long.  I tell myself I can run at a dead sprint for 30 seconds any time and that there’s no reason I shouldn’t be pushing to do so.  I manage to get my pace as fast as 5:42 per mile during those intervals and it really shows me the shape I’m in.  I can dead out pound the treadmill.

Housekeeping:  7.8 miles in 70 minutes, 8:58 per mile average; 872 calories.  Those last two numbers are a bit down, again, based on my lack of running during vacation, and also because to get back into zone 2 I was doing some 15:00 mile averages.  That’s a function of my recovery ability.  I have some trouble ramping up my heart rate initially, but I never have much trouble getting it to recover.  I can see a drop of as much as 45 beats per minute in a one minute slice, though I typically have to really slow down to get it to recover that quickly.  Still, I like knowing it can readily recover, because it means that after a race, I’m not walking around really gassed.  I was mildly disappointed I didn’t burn 900 calories or more on this run as well, but I also knew that the walking segments cost me that chance.

Damnit!  More blisters.  I have overcompensated and in my attempt to wrap my feet more loosely, I only managed to let the wrap cause the blister.  That settles it, this weekend I am going to get new stability control shoes and I guess this is an expensive lesson learned.  I didn’t want to have to effectively waste the money on these Asics, but I cannot keep trying to work around the shoe issue.  Oh well, at least I finished without much pain in general.  I do have some tightness in my right knee though and that continues to trouble me.  I’m not sure if I’ve really done something or if I just needed to stretch, or if it is related to my laziness.  Probably a bit of all of those, but it always annoys me when the wheels seem to fail me.  I’m just going to have to accept that I’m getting old and listen to my body when it tells me things aren’t going well.  I only have two more weeks of the cardiac program until I try to start my own training for the half marathon and I really just want to get it done so I can start something else.

Cheers!

April 30, 2009 – Zone 3

Well, I had to get back into this at some point, so this week was only three workouts.  Today’s was what is in this segment one of my favorites.  It’s just 60 straight minutes of zone 3 running, where my heart rate is supposed to stay between 157 and 173 beats per minute.  This is a purely aerobic run, and really where I am trying to set my pace for endurance running like the half marathon.  I could likely run 13.1 miles in zone 2 and 3 if I ran slowly enough, but that’s not my goal.  As I had stated very early in this blog, I’m working on a velocity training function, and I want to be able to cover a specific distance in fixed times.

I can tell I’m carrying some extra weight as well as some lack of running.  I had been completing 9 miles during this run before vacation.  No such luck today.  Housekeeping:  8.3 miles in 70 minutes, an average pace of 8:26 per mile.  920 calories burned.  The calories burned surprised me somewhat.  I’m really cooking the calories suddenly.  Now, obviously, part of that is that my body is working harder because I was so lazy, but part of it is that the break also allowed my body to kick into a higher gear once I got back.  I don’t have a sense of how this will affect the race, but I’d really like to be able to get back the extra pounds prior to the race next Sunday.  We’ll see.

A bit of right knee issue to cope with during the run.  It seems the tendonitis still hasn’t really abated and though it seems to react well once it warms up, it starts out tweaking a bit.  Of course, abandoning my strength training until after this next race was probably not the wisest move either, but there were just too many interruptions and I don’t want added muscle soreness prior to the race.  I just hope that I can once again get the knee to cooperate.  I know a good bit of the pain is due to the stresses associated with sub 6 minute mile sprinting during the threshold workouts, but it doesn’t make this any easier to cope with.

8.3 miles was short.  I felt gassed and really annoyed.  I need a good long run of 10 miles or more to convince myself I can actually do this half marathon.  I haven’t even gotten close to 10 yet.  Perhaps I should just set a mild pace and allow my pace to stay constant and let time vary just to show myself I can finish the distance.  Part of the mental challenge is just convincing myself the distance is possible.

Cheers!