Kara Sevda

One hour with no pain =

You've shown great self-discipline as you've come back from the brink. Keep it up!

Every day can't be roses, right? Haven't really slept much/well this week and since Wednesday morning I've been pretty stressed, so it kind of all hit me today. Not the end of the world.

Two long hours on the bike that started with a 30-minute delay due to discovering a flat (ugh) and then fiddling with different wheels, tires, and tubes until I found a combination that worked. That is one thing I truly hate about this area - I've gotten more puncture flats from little shards of metal in the last couple months than I've gotten in my entire cycling history. Nonsense.

Anyway, the "big hill" in the middle of the ride wasn't actually that big - or, not as big as I remembered - and the long slog home was only slightly long and sloggish. Just never found a groove or rhythm in the ride though. Oh well, that's another 2hrs of aerobic base in the bag.

Great. I jinxed you with the little smiley.

All your fault, Mark.

Nah, I just needed some sleep.
Can't say I got it last night, but at least I felt good this morning.

Speaking of feeling good...
Glad I didn't panic or read into yesterday's shittiness, because today would've showed me how much energy I'd wasted. Yes, running feels damn good, and I'm damn happy about this.

Went out for a planned 35min and after the first 2 said to myself, "Let's add 10 onto that." And a minute later said, "No, the time for pushing it will come. Right now is the time for discipline." So I reigned in the horses and just enjoyed the feeling of carefree running.

Talking to Aileen post-run, I realized that if I had an extra month, I'd really try for a sub-3 in Boston. I honestly think that with the paces I've been running and the rate it's coming back to me, I'd be able to start seriously training after another full month of base. Alas, it's not going to happen. Really too bad. But it's helping me to stay motivated and look forward to CIM (or something for the late fall). I'll have a nice, long summer of base cycling and running, then 2-6 weeks transition and 12 weeks of serious marathon training.

Anyway, that's 35min in the books and my first 20mi week since September. Yeah, FOUR MONTHS. Ridiculous.

Hey hey I just got my first 20 mile week in since about October! Grats man, keep up the good work!

Neil - Feels good, doesn't it?

Planned 45min easy today. Did that thing where the beginning of the run feels kind of... just not there, so I push it just a smidgen to try and break up all the rust. Actual effort was easy with a little bit of easy+ and one short surge to beat a light. Pace was just over 8min/mi. Doesn't feel anything like marathon effort, but that's the pace I'm planning for Boston. Makes me confident I'll be able to get through this cycle and develop a really good base to carry through the remainder of the year.

3-4hr hike including 30-45min running tomorrow.

Saw your comments, Mike - thanks. 3:30 scares me right now - but we will see.................

Just let me know, Michele. I'm training for a wide range of goal times, but I'm refusing to budge outside of 3:30. Boston can't be my PW (personal worst)...

Well, the bike has another flat (that's 2 from last week), and I didn't feel like changing it, so over the weekend I decided instead that I'd go on a long hike today. I was going to follow a running route I used to do quite a bit over the summer - for those of you with Auburn area trail maps, Quarry Trail to Main(e) Bar to Robie/WS to Brown's Bar back to Quarry and out the trailhead. I didn't know the exact length of the loop, but I was guessing around 14-16 which, with a half hour of running thrown in there, would give me a hike of ~3-4hr.

The run became 35min and was amazing. I felt like a runner again, and felt like I could go for hours on end. It was a huge boost to my confidence that I was running on hilly, winding terrain and it felt so easy and pain-free. My enthusiasm and high were only slightly bounced back to reality by the numbers from the run portion. Man, numbers can really suck sometimes. Here I thought I was running 8:00-8:15 pace the whole time, because it seriously felt like I was flying... No. More like 9:50s. What?! My NGP (here we go again...) sort of made up for it: 8:35.

But you know what? It's early in the season yet, and the 3hr35min on my feet are going to help me out in Boston in 11 weeks. Besides, now I have a lot of room for improvement.

Mike MacLellan wrote:Just let me know, Michele. I'm training for a wide range of goal times, but I'm refusing to budge outside of 3:30. Boston can't be my PW (personal worst)...

It was mine for a few years (I had a horrible race in the warm year of 2004 - I dropped out at mile 20, and then dropped back in 25 min late. I ran 4:20 that year for Boston. Of course, I have since run slower marathons, but those were on purpose - 2004's race did not go as planned)

Whew, talk about sore glutes... Just getting out of bed was a bit of a comedy act this morning.

I wasn't expecting much out of today's 40min run, given my soreness - seriously, I need a massage - but was pleasantly surprised to see that I'd run almost 5 miles by the end of it. Effort was easy with a few short stints above that, but I quickly reeled those back in and reminded myself I have an 8-10mi run on Friday. All in all, not too bad for a recovery day.

Those numbers didn't look bad to me - one of your first longer runs in some time with nasty hills. An adjusted 8:35 is fine - my guess is that you can bounce back pretty quickly. The trick is to take it slow which you are doing better than I could probably do! Keep up the great work...

I'm trying not to obsess too much on numbers. Trying is the operative word, but for the most part, I've been successful. Just have to keep reminding myself that I've got a few more weeks of base, then I can start incorporating some very controlled, disciplined speed. And even then, just enough to give me a little boost.

So, it looks like Wednesdays are going to be my Fridays this semester, in that everyone in my program goes out for "a beer" after class and ends up at the bar until somewhere between midnight and two. Meaning Thursdays are going to be some creaky runs. Later on, this will become a little bit of an issue and I may have to curtail my revelry, but as of now, easy miles are easy miles whether they're creaky or not.

45min this morning; the first 33min on the canal, the last bit on a loop around my house with 4-5 little rollers (20') that I used for hill-sprint/surges. The canal portion was an 8:40 average, the loop was 8:00 for the same effort level. Sounds about right, as I think I was running around 45sec slower on trails over the summer than streets.

75-80min tomorrow, which should put me somewhere between 9-10 miles. This will be the first real "long run" of my season, so I'm going to take it nice and slow at the beginning and see if I can do a 3:1.

So we have the really good and the slightly less good. The latter is more of a function of me being hard on myself. The former is based in fact.

I went out for 75-80min today... Let's be honest, it was 80min. Took the first 20min as a zero-effort warm-up, which I needed; glutes were still a little creaky and I just needed to wake up a bit. The next 40min were steady easy effort. Had a couple of those "I'm not even noticing that my legs are moving" moments where running just feels like a natural state of being. That was really, really nice. There was a lot more traffic on the road today (I'm running on Auburn-Folsom, a two-lane highway that connects its namesake towns) so that would occasionally pull me from my reverie. Oh well.

Turned around at 40min after a quick "nature break" in the bushes and plodded back up (net 300' loss for the first half) towards my car. With 20min to go, I picked it up just a smidgen, from easy to easy+, hoping to get back the minute I'd lost during my turnaround stop. That's when I noticed that I haven't done any sort of continuous effort running in a long, long time. Even just a slight push required a bit of concentration. Ended up about 30sec short of my car when the watch struck 80min, so I walked the rest.

Average pace (this is the slightly less good part) was 8:30. Which is fine, since it was easy, but easy used to mean sub-8s. I know, comparisons aren't going to help at this point. I just want that fitness back. Patience, patience, patience.

Mike MacLellan wrote: I just want that fitness back. Patience, patience, patience.

Join the club on that sentiment my friend!

mul21 wrote:

Mike MacLellan wrote: I just want that fitness back. Patience, patience, patience.

Join the club on that sentiment my friend!

+2!

It will come, if you let it happen at its own pace.

Or, as the big guy says...

Nice video, Mark. Have never seen that before, believe it or not.

4hr hike with my brother and his dog today. Just under 12 miles. Not as hilly as the other one, but I think I'll be feeling this one in my glutes tomorrow, too. It did have Cardiac in it (that .9mi, 800' gain/loss hill I used to run... what was I thinking?)...

Oh well, the fish tacos and beer for dinner are going to be well worth it.

I'm glad that my body views junk food as rocket fuel, because I seriously have good runs every time I gorge on non-nutritive trash. No pun intended.

Solid hour right around MP today, but effort level was closer to GA. After the first 15 minutes, it was actually pretty easy, and I found a nice little rhythm to go on. Definitely a confidence boost, as I felt like I could've feasibly continued for another 2.5hr for a 3.5hr marathon today, let alone in 10 weeks.

Whoops, forgot to post about the hike yesterday. Such is life when school actually consumes a good chunk of time...

So I followed the same trails my brother and I hiked this weekend. I was originally planning on a 3hr bike ride, but it was cold and threatening rain, and I didn't want to get on the bike. Since time on feet is more important at this point anyway, I headed out for a planned 3hr hike-run-hike.

In short, the hiking portions were easy (well, going up Cardiac wasn't "easy," really, but it wasn't hard), though I did notice my quads (the teardrop part of the muscle next to/above the knee; aka the bottom of the vastus medialis) were a little sore going down Cardiac. The run was considerably more difficult, probably because the first 10-20 minutes of it included some deceptive uphill gradients that I took a little too hard. Still, got a solid hour of running in, mostly at easy effort level with some short hilly parts approaching tempo/LT effort. Then hiked up cardiac and along the canal to make it home.

This is the first 3hrXmin hike I've done where I've felt no sort of hip or groin tightness at the end; in the past, it hasn't been anything warranting even the least amount of concern, but just a little reminder that my legs weren't quite what they used to be. Yesterday, a bit of progress.

I've started noticing the past couple days that my training is actually starting to produce some fatigue; I'm needing extra sleep (8-9hr instead of 7-8hr), and if I don't get it, I'm slightly irritable. Also, my legs are starting to show some fatigue, so I'll actually be using today as a recovery day instead of just another easy run. All this lines up perfectly with where I want to be, since I have a cutback week next week.

Right now, projecting just over 42mi running (6hr total) for the week + 7-8 hiking.

Gonna have to give up my usual Wednesday revelry soon... Definitely for my peak weeks. Probably before that, once I start incorporating actual tempo runs into my schedule.

That said, nothing better to kill a slight hangover than fartlek intervals, right? Er, sort of. Went out for an hour, starting the intervals after about 20min. Nothing to hard, but definitely enough to wake up the legs and get the heart pounding for a minute or two. I ended up with 7 intervals ranging from 1/8-1/3mi with variable recovery speeds and times. In other words, a pretty standard fartlek run. I did notice my stride becoming slightly sloppy during the last interval (which was on a 4-5% downhill gradient), and my feet were slapping a bit harder than I'd have liked, so that's something I'll be paying attention to once I really get into some faster running.

Overall, just sub-8:00 average pace and I'm no worse for the wear. 100mins tomorrow!

Looking good Mike.

Thanks for stopping by Alex. I've been checking on your blog and have no doubts you're going to nail that BQ.

---

Another short-and-long-of-it recap today.

Short of it (via my text to Aileen immediately following the run): "That's more like it. Hour forty, 12.28 miles. 8:09 average pace. All easy effort." "Felt like a runner again. I love sanity."

The long of it: Made sure to go out really easy, and the net elevation loss of 300' in the first 3.25 miles gave me just the right amount of gravitational assistance to get the legs up to speed without overly taxing my body early on. 8:13 pace for that section.
Came back up for the next 3.25 miles and allowed myself to keep a steady effort up the hills. 8:18 pace for that section.
Grabbed a granola bar at the car and kept going up a little bit more, then down a hill onto some rolling terrain. Turned onto a road with a nice little 200' hill and barreled down the other side back towards the car. Realized I'd be a few minutes early, so I cut onto a side road and tacked on a half mile or so before finishing up. 8:01 average for that section.

Needless to say, I've got a mental and physical high going on right now. Feels SO good to be back in the swing of things, putting out numbers that I can look at and feel confident about, and to feel no pain whatsoever when I run. As I was driving back to the apartment, Travis Tritt's "Great Day to be Alive" came on the radio, and the timing couldn't have been more appropriate. That song got me through a lot of shit last semester and kept me relatively positive when things just weren't going well. So it was a nice reminder of what I came through to get to this point and where I'm going from here.



Enjoy your weekend, all.

Nice job on the run, and on your long journey back.

It sounds like you've hit the sweet spot. Keep letting it happen, and you'll stay there a while.

Kept the sweet spot going with a 40min recovery/whatever I feel like run this morning. Ended up being 8:21 pace, so somewhere in the easy pace range.

Then an 11-mile, 3:50 hike with my brother. Between his dog having GI problems from getting into avocados and ketchup and the myriad mountain bikers on the trail, we stopped a lot.

EDIT: Figured I'd add some photos...




I'm pooped. Where's my beer?

Glad things are going well! I remember that song being extra meaningful to me when I was working through some pretty serious depression in '03.

Leave it to the Georgia boy to make you feel better

Nice work, Mike - just keep taking it easy as you ramp it up. Many mistakes that I made in my early days as a runner (your age!) were due to my getting over zealous. I used to run every run at 7 min pace regardless and then do speedwork! Oh and thanks for the jinx from you and Chris M regarding 8 min pace at Boston. I'll blame you guys for my hip flexor/glute issue this week