Today was another 6 mile run during lunch. I opted to go during lunch because it's still light out, and with weather on the way I didn't want to deal with running at home after a few inches of snow had potentially fallen.
This was my typical 6.3 mile loop at work, but I ran it a bit faster than normal due to a time crunch I had to be back for. As a result, my HR was a bit higher than I'd have liked for a base building run (HR=155) - so at the top end of the easy pace range, but still within it.
The best news, though, was that the IT band didn't bother me at all. So, considering that with all the rolling and massaging and such that I've been doing the past few days, yet continuing to maintain the hour or so per day of workouts - the fact that it has been subsiding is good news. I take that to mean that I'm staying ahead of it, as opposed to treading water or even worse, falling behind.
I'm real curious to see how things will pan out next week after the 30k race on Sunday. I've been tossing around in my head how to approach it - initially I wanted to try and get all 18 miles at marathon pace, knowing that would be pushing it - but now I'm second guessing that approach. If it were the only stressful workout thus far, then that might be a different story - but on the heels of this IT band, I don't think I want to push it that much. I may do something like one mile easy, two miles marathon pace - rinse and repeat 6x. That way I still get 12 total miles @ marathon pace, but some down time in between to let things catch up. Depending on how things go, I'm not opposed to taking walk breaks after each two mile MP segment - but I'd like to see how things go if I don't.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Trainerroad - Carson 2/28/12
In deciding whether to run or bike today, I opted for the bike. I wanted to give my IT band another day of running rest, and with the 30k on Sunday, I figured a Wed/Fri/Sun running schedule for the week would work.
Todays workout was the Carson workout, which was comprised of 2 x 5 minute, 2 x 6 minute and 2 x 7 minute intervals. The first of each set was at slightly lower power than the subsequent interval, and the rest time in between was a short two minutes. I feel as though I'm getting much better at producing smooth power - whereas before I seemed to be around +/- 7 Watts (my own estimation), I feel like I've more recently been closer to +/- 4 watts or so. Doesn't sound like much, but I take it as an indication that I'm getting stronger on the back, top and bottom portions of the cycle.
The best part was that the IT band felt pretty good. I did roll it a bit before getting on the bike, and I've been using the massage stick a few times throughout the day over the past couple days when I'm not at home with access to a foam roller - but I've also been doing a couple 5-10 minute sessions on the roller as well. I'm still not sure how much effect that has vs overall rest and letting the muscles fully heal up, but I am going to continue the rolling and massaging because I want to minimize the chance of another flareup during some of the more intense workouts I'll have coming up starting in a couple weeks.
Todays workout was the Carson workout, which was comprised of 2 x 5 minute, 2 x 6 minute and 2 x 7 minute intervals. The first of each set was at slightly lower power than the subsequent interval, and the rest time in between was a short two minutes. I feel as though I'm getting much better at producing smooth power - whereas before I seemed to be around +/- 7 Watts (my own estimation), I feel like I've more recently been closer to +/- 4 watts or so. Doesn't sound like much, but I take it as an indication that I'm getting stronger on the back, top and bottom portions of the cycle.
The best part was that the IT band felt pretty good. I did roll it a bit before getting on the bike, and I've been using the massage stick a few times throughout the day over the past couple days when I'm not at home with access to a foam roller - but I've also been doing a couple 5-10 minute sessions on the roller as well. I'm still not sure how much effect that has vs overall rest and letting the muscles fully heal up, but I am going to continue the rolling and massaging because I want to minimize the chance of another flareup during some of the more intense workouts I'll have coming up starting in a couple weeks.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Trainerroad - Thunder workout - 2/26/12
Since the IT band was feeling better today, I couldn't resist hopping on the trainer for another workout. Probably not the greatest idea (as I ultimately found out), but I suppose I'd rather learn the lesson sooner rather than later.
This workout was a total of nine intervals around ~90% FTP. In order to squeeze that many intervals in, they had to be relatively short (4 minutes), and with short recovery in between (2 minutes). During the first recovery (which was longer @ 5 minutes), I threw in two minutes of ILT for each leg. I think one of the objectives of this workout was to start getting used to short recovery times in between intervals.
About 1/3 of the way in, I did start to feel the IT band rubbing again, so at this point I've decided to cut out doubling up on run and bike sessions in a single day. A day is either a run or a bike.
This workout was a total of nine intervals around ~90% FTP. In order to squeeze that many intervals in, they had to be relatively short (4 minutes), and with short recovery in between (2 minutes). During the first recovery (which was longer @ 5 minutes), I threw in two minutes of ILT for each leg. I think one of the objectives of this workout was to start getting used to short recovery times in between intervals.
About 1/3 of the way in, I did start to feel the IT band rubbing again, so at this point I've decided to cut out doubling up on run and bike sessions in a single day. A day is either a run or a bike.
11 mile easy run - 2/26/12
Today's run was something of a moving target over the past couple days. Being two weeks away from the Stu's 30k, and being a month out from my last long run of 20 miles, I wanted to do another 20 miler, with the idea that I'd have enough recovery time before the 30k, and that I'd maintain something in the 20 mile range every few weeks. However, with the minor IT band set back this previous week, I was hesitant to fully commit to the distance. In fact, even yesterday afternoon I wasn't sure what kind of run would be in the cards - if one at all.
In an attempt to throw everything plus the kitchen sink at it, I rolled multiple times yesterday (sometimes on PVC, sometimes on foam), I iced a couple times, stretched a couple times and popped a couple aspirin before bedtime. I woke this morning with things feeling closer to normal - not 100%, but at least in the right direction. I still didn't want to commit to a full 20, though - so I set off figuring I'd do my 11 mile loop and see how things went.
Around mile 7-8, I was hit with a realization that made me do a mental 'durrrrrrr'. I realized that over the summer, the 20 mile run was something to be respected - planned for, executed well, and plenty of time allowed for recovery (ie, reduced mileage in the subsequent week). At the time, it was a major accomplishment, and I treated it as such. Unfortunately, I had allowed a conquerors mentality to take over - since I had done it a few times before, I was treating it as though it is no big deal. Or at least not as big of a deal. Today I realized that that attitude was incorrect - something in that range still requires a great deal of respect - I'm not yet built up enough to be so cavalier about it. The past few weeks have demonstrated that.
The best way to show this is looking at my running mileage graph:
Obviously, this doesn't represent the mileage graph of someone following a prescribed training program - so toss aside any rules of thumb about how to progress in mileage. The point I want to make is that it is clear that over the summer, from about May until October, every high mileage week was followed by a low mileage week of half or fewer miles than the previous week. The goal at the time was simply to extend the long run distance, so I was ok with that pattern, and it worked well for me. Then, once the new year hit and I started thinking about base building for July, I started adding in mid-week runs - and after peaking in early February, the subsequent weeks did not see nearly the same degree of drop-off in mileage as was seen during the summer. In my desire to maintain the feel of the long runs, I wasn't giving myself enough recovery time, because I also wanted to add in additional miles throughout the week for a strong base. In short, too much, too fast. Add in doing a half marathon pace test run of 11 miles, followed the next week by the half marathon itself, PLUS the biking workouts during the week - it ends up being a recipe for eventual disaster.
So, the fact that I woke up this morning with the IT band feeling better was a huge relief. While I recognize I'm not out of the woods yet, the train ride to disaster, so far, looks to have been averted. And with the epiphany during my run today, I feel as though I've been able to further hone my approach to minimize chance of a repeat. Or worse.
Originally, I was thinking that Phase I of base building (beginning of Feb to mid-March) would be all about slow and easy miles, with a few runs in the 17-20 mile range and very few 'quality' workouts (ie, anything with speed). Wrong!! What I realized is that a run of that distance is a quality workout. I may not be stressing my glycogen stores or muscle fibers or oxygen extracting capability - but I am stressing my structural systems, which is currently limited by my IT band. So, aside from the 30k in a couple weeks - no more runs of over about 13 miles for me during base building. Suddenly the Jack Daniels rule of thumb of limiting the long run to 2.5 hours makes a lot more sense to me (not that it didn't before, but now it's personal). So at this point in my conditioning - anything more than about an 1hr and 45m should be considered a quality run, and given it's due process for recovery.
The other aspect is that during base building, I'm probably much better off with maintaining consistency and frequency of workouts, as opposed to having the occasional stressful workouts that requires additional recovery time - as the former allows for more overall workout time. I'd love to be able to bang out a 20 miler every couple weeks, maintain another 2-3 days per week of doing a lunch time sixers, plus being able to do the three bike workouts per week - but that is simply too much for my body to handle. If I go out and run 17-20 miles and it takes me about three hours - I get three hours of 'fitness'. However if that requires reduced activity over the next several days because of necessary recovery - I lose several hours of training time in the end. On the other hand, if I can get much of the same benefit (in terms of base building - increased mitochondrial and red blood cell count, improved oxygen extraction capability, etc) by shortening the run and it taking only an hour and a half, I will recover more quickly and then be able to follow up with mid-week runs and/or cycling training session of an hour each, and end the week with more time training, with less injury risk.
So now I'm thinking that in Phase II, which I recently decided would be comprised of two quality runs/week and one quality bike/week - I can keep the running distances on the shorter side doing things like tempo runs or intervals. This actually aligns with the Jack Daniels plan anyway, where Phase II is initial quality. Then, in Phase III, when there is only one quality run/week, I can work on extending via threshold or marathon pace runs, gradually building up the distance of those.
With all that in mind, here are the results of todays run.
EDIT: Umm, wow. I'm glad I didn't do 20. I just realized that Stu's is next weekend! A week sooner than I thought. Yikes!
In an attempt to throw everything plus the kitchen sink at it, I rolled multiple times yesterday (sometimes on PVC, sometimes on foam), I iced a couple times, stretched a couple times and popped a couple aspirin before bedtime. I woke this morning with things feeling closer to normal - not 100%, but at least in the right direction. I still didn't want to commit to a full 20, though - so I set off figuring I'd do my 11 mile loop and see how things went.
Around mile 7-8, I was hit with a realization that made me do a mental 'durrrrrrr'. I realized that over the summer, the 20 mile run was something to be respected - planned for, executed well, and plenty of time allowed for recovery (ie, reduced mileage in the subsequent week). At the time, it was a major accomplishment, and I treated it as such. Unfortunately, I had allowed a conquerors mentality to take over - since I had done it a few times before, I was treating it as though it is no big deal. Or at least not as big of a deal. Today I realized that that attitude was incorrect - something in that range still requires a great deal of respect - I'm not yet built up enough to be so cavalier about it. The past few weeks have demonstrated that.
The best way to show this is looking at my running mileage graph:
Obviously, this doesn't represent the mileage graph of someone following a prescribed training program - so toss aside any rules of thumb about how to progress in mileage. The point I want to make is that it is clear that over the summer, from about May until October, every high mileage week was followed by a low mileage week of half or fewer miles than the previous week. The goal at the time was simply to extend the long run distance, so I was ok with that pattern, and it worked well for me. Then, once the new year hit and I started thinking about base building for July, I started adding in mid-week runs - and after peaking in early February, the subsequent weeks did not see nearly the same degree of drop-off in mileage as was seen during the summer. In my desire to maintain the feel of the long runs, I wasn't giving myself enough recovery time, because I also wanted to add in additional miles throughout the week for a strong base. In short, too much, too fast. Add in doing a half marathon pace test run of 11 miles, followed the next week by the half marathon itself, PLUS the biking workouts during the week - it ends up being a recipe for eventual disaster.
So, the fact that I woke up this morning with the IT band feeling better was a huge relief. While I recognize I'm not out of the woods yet, the train ride to disaster, so far, looks to have been averted. And with the epiphany during my run today, I feel as though I've been able to further hone my approach to minimize chance of a repeat. Or worse.
Originally, I was thinking that Phase I of base building (beginning of Feb to mid-March) would be all about slow and easy miles, with a few runs in the 17-20 mile range and very few 'quality' workouts (ie, anything with speed). Wrong!! What I realized is that a run of that distance is a quality workout. I may not be stressing my glycogen stores or muscle fibers or oxygen extracting capability - but I am stressing my structural systems, which is currently limited by my IT band. So, aside from the 30k in a couple weeks - no more runs of over about 13 miles for me during base building. Suddenly the Jack Daniels rule of thumb of limiting the long run to 2.5 hours makes a lot more sense to me (not that it didn't before, but now it's personal). So at this point in my conditioning - anything more than about an 1hr and 45m should be considered a quality run, and given it's due process for recovery.
The other aspect is that during base building, I'm probably much better off with maintaining consistency and frequency of workouts, as opposed to having the occasional stressful workouts that requires additional recovery time - as the former allows for more overall workout time. I'd love to be able to bang out a 20 miler every couple weeks, maintain another 2-3 days per week of doing a lunch time sixers, plus being able to do the three bike workouts per week - but that is simply too much for my body to handle. If I go out and run 17-20 miles and it takes me about three hours - I get three hours of 'fitness'. However if that requires reduced activity over the next several days because of necessary recovery - I lose several hours of training time in the end. On the other hand, if I can get much of the same benefit (in terms of base building - increased mitochondrial and red blood cell count, improved oxygen extraction capability, etc) by shortening the run and it taking only an hour and a half, I will recover more quickly and then be able to follow up with mid-week runs and/or cycling training session of an hour each, and end the week with more time training, with less injury risk.
So now I'm thinking that in Phase II, which I recently decided would be comprised of two quality runs/week and one quality bike/week - I can keep the running distances on the shorter side doing things like tempo runs or intervals. This actually aligns with the Jack Daniels plan anyway, where Phase II is initial quality. Then, in Phase III, when there is only one quality run/week, I can work on extending via threshold or marathon pace runs, gradually building up the distance of those.
With all that in mind, here are the results of todays run.
EDIT: Umm, wow. I'm glad I didn't do 20. I just realized that Stu's is next weekend! A week sooner than I thought. Yikes!
Saturday, February 25, 2012
2700 yd swim and TR antelope workout - 2/25/12
It's been a while since I've been to the pool - looking back, it looks like the last time was December 3 - getting close to three months ago!
I had tried to go a couple times from now until then, but the pool that I go to is used by local HS swim teams, and December and January are the real busy months. Then, I realized that the $40/month I was spending on the membership was not getting used very much anymore, so I cancelled it and went with more of a pay-per-swim type membership. In the course of all this, I came to the conclusion that in all honesty, my swim is about as good as it'll get from here until July - at 45 minutes for 1.5 miles, it is certainly respectable. Sure, with extra work I could probably knock off a couple minutes, but it'd take a lot of time that I'd be better served dedicating to the bike or the run. I also figured that since I've been working on honing form so much over the past year and a half, that I could likely put swimming on the back burner with minimal negative effect. My thinking has been that in June, once the temps in the local ponds and lakes warms up, I can brush off the rust, and likely be back to where I was in December in only a few sessions. It'd also time perfectly with the mileage taper going into IMLP in July - during the time I'm reducing time and mileage on the bike and run, I can put last minute touches on the swim.
However, I didn't want to totally throw all faith into that plan without some idea of whether it'd work - so over the past couple weeks I've been looking for a place to squeeze in a swim session to see how things would go. Today I finally got the chance. Overall I'm really pleased how things turned out. Within a couple laps I was honing in on the things I was working on previously - lower right hand catch, keeping the head down, etc - so I felt like I was pretty much right where I left off. The endurance was lagging slightly, but I think that was partially an effect of starting out too fast - something that is a constant problem as much as I try to slow down. The spread between my fastest lap (the first one) and the lowest lap (near the end) was a full 10 seconds - 42.something to 53.something. Most of the first 20 or so laps were sub-50, then things started creeping up into the 50-51 range until lap 36 or so, and most of the laps after that were 51-52.
Total Distance: 2750 yds
Total Time: 46:03
Avg: 50.25
The three month layoff looks to have been worth a whole 0.07 seconds per lap. Whoop-de-doo!
So, that is great news - because it means that all the time and effort into form that I had put in previously - mile after mile of doing the same thing over and over again, not paying attention to speed or building muscle (which needs to be maintained) is paying off. That all tells me my approach of putting swimming aside (maybe once every couple weeks) for a few months should be viable.
When I got home, I hit the trainer and did the trainerroad Antelope workout. Being a weekend workout, it was 90 minutes instead of the standard 60 minutes, and again it was intervals (5 x 10 minutes) at about ~90% FTP. Rest intervals were 5 minutes, of which I spent 2.5 minutes of each on ILT, alternating between legs in each rest period. I'm really liking the fact that I can get regular ILT in during workouts - I feel I'm finding that to be one of the biggest... improvers of my cycling skills. Not sure 'improvers' is a word - but you know what I mean.
The not-so-great news is that I could start feeling what I think is the IT band again. Most of the intervals were done at a slightly low cadence (80-85) - but the last one I increased it a bit into the low 90's - and felt the IT band less. So it might be that related to degree of power generation on the left leg. I'm not terribly concerned about it - I know I went through a period of a lot of stress with increased volume, double sessions, switching shoes, strength training and an intense race - so there is a lot of ways to back off for a while to see if things settle down. I mentioned in a previous post going back to the Nike Free's for running to see if that helps - but I'm also going to be more adamant about not running two days in a row. I also had dreams of being able to do a long 20-ish mile run twice per month (every other weekend) - but that option may be off the table. While that may, in some ways, have been beneficial - if I have to scratch that approach, I'm actually ok with it. I can still do one of those per month and get much of the same benefit - and in fact once I get to the quality workout phases, the recovery time will be longer between workouts, so doing a long run every other week may have just ended up being way too much anyway. Finally, I'll make sure to do a better job of stretching during the week, and start revisiting the foam roller on a regular basis. It can't hurt - plus my strategy in these kinds of situations is to throw everything possible at the problem to get things straightened out and figure out the details later.
I had tried to go a couple times from now until then, but the pool that I go to is used by local HS swim teams, and December and January are the real busy months. Then, I realized that the $40/month I was spending on the membership was not getting used very much anymore, so I cancelled it and went with more of a pay-per-swim type membership. In the course of all this, I came to the conclusion that in all honesty, my swim is about as good as it'll get from here until July - at 45 minutes for 1.5 miles, it is certainly respectable. Sure, with extra work I could probably knock off a couple minutes, but it'd take a lot of time that I'd be better served dedicating to the bike or the run. I also figured that since I've been working on honing form so much over the past year and a half, that I could likely put swimming on the back burner with minimal negative effect. My thinking has been that in June, once the temps in the local ponds and lakes warms up, I can brush off the rust, and likely be back to where I was in December in only a few sessions. It'd also time perfectly with the mileage taper going into IMLP in July - during the time I'm reducing time and mileage on the bike and run, I can put last minute touches on the swim.
However, I didn't want to totally throw all faith into that plan without some idea of whether it'd work - so over the past couple weeks I've been looking for a place to squeeze in a swim session to see how things would go. Today I finally got the chance. Overall I'm really pleased how things turned out. Within a couple laps I was honing in on the things I was working on previously - lower right hand catch, keeping the head down, etc - so I felt like I was pretty much right where I left off. The endurance was lagging slightly, but I think that was partially an effect of starting out too fast - something that is a constant problem as much as I try to slow down. The spread between my fastest lap (the first one) and the lowest lap (near the end) was a full 10 seconds - 42.something to 53.something. Most of the first 20 or so laps were sub-50, then things started creeping up into the 50-51 range until lap 36 or so, and most of the laps after that were 51-52.
Total Distance: 2750 yds
Total Time: 46:03
Avg: 50.25
The three month layoff looks to have been worth a whole 0.07 seconds per lap. Whoop-de-doo!
So, that is great news - because it means that all the time and effort into form that I had put in previously - mile after mile of doing the same thing over and over again, not paying attention to speed or building muscle (which needs to be maintained) is paying off. That all tells me my approach of putting swimming aside (maybe once every couple weeks) for a few months should be viable.
When I got home, I hit the trainer and did the trainerroad Antelope workout. Being a weekend workout, it was 90 minutes instead of the standard 60 minutes, and again it was intervals (5 x 10 minutes) at about ~90% FTP. Rest intervals were 5 minutes, of which I spent 2.5 minutes of each on ILT, alternating between legs in each rest period. I'm really liking the fact that I can get regular ILT in during workouts - I feel I'm finding that to be one of the biggest... improvers of my cycling skills. Not sure 'improvers' is a word - but you know what I mean.
The not-so-great news is that I could start feeling what I think is the IT band again. Most of the intervals were done at a slightly low cadence (80-85) - but the last one I increased it a bit into the low 90's - and felt the IT band less. So it might be that related to degree of power generation on the left leg. I'm not terribly concerned about it - I know I went through a period of a lot of stress with increased volume, double sessions, switching shoes, strength training and an intense race - so there is a lot of ways to back off for a while to see if things settle down. I mentioned in a previous post going back to the Nike Free's for running to see if that helps - but I'm also going to be more adamant about not running two days in a row. I also had dreams of being able to do a long 20-ish mile run twice per month (every other weekend) - but that option may be off the table. While that may, in some ways, have been beneficial - if I have to scratch that approach, I'm actually ok with it. I can still do one of those per month and get much of the same benefit - and in fact once I get to the quality workout phases, the recovery time will be longer between workouts, so doing a long run every other week may have just ended up being way too much anyway. Finally, I'll make sure to do a better job of stretching during the week, and start revisiting the foam roller on a regular basis. It can't hurt - plus my strategy in these kinds of situations is to throw everything possible at the problem to get things straightened out and figure out the details later.
Friday, February 24, 2012
4 mile easy run and TR Geiger workout - 2/24
In addition to going to yoga a couple times this week, I also had a deep tissue massage yesterday after work. I find them to be helpful every so often, and I'm actually debating making them more regular in the upcoming months, especially because my training will be increasing not only in volume, but intensity. I'm still mulling around in my head how to best approach it to minimize chance of a setback or injury. Originally, I was thinking that I'd have three quality workouts per week, and do something like alternating bike-heavy and run-heavy weeks. For example, one week have two quality bike workouts and one quality run, and the next week have two quality run workouts and one quality bike. However, it may be that two quality runs in one week would be too much to add a quality bike in as well.
My original thought was to follow up the six week base building with Daniels Phase II (initial quality) for both the bike and the run for six weeks, but another thought might be to spent that time (basically from mid-March until end of April) concentrating on running with two quality runs per week, with the bike workouts being less intense. Then, from May until mid-June, which would normally be Daniels Phase III (transition quality) I could concentrate on quality bike workouts. This accomplishes a few things:
(1) By putting the running first, if I do have a set back, I have more time to absorb it;
(2) Cycling carries over to running more than the opposite, in my experience. The cycling will maintain the aerobic capacity, and therefore all I would need to do for running is maintenance - long runs every so often to maintain endurance, and threshold runs to maintain speed.
(3) The weather will be nicer with the bike quality phase being May/June instead of March/April.
Anyhow, back to massage - it occurred to me that I might be well served by reintroducing myself to the roller. Now that I've had a few massages and have a better idea of what they target in terms of knotted tissue, I might have better luck with using it.
Moving on to today's run -
I wasn't convinced I'd actually go for a run until shortly before I went. I was hesitant because I want to do a long run this weekend, and I want to be better about not doing too much on successive days. On the other hand, I wanted to see how things felt, as it's been several days since my last run. Normally my lunch time runs are six miles, but today I did a shorter 4.3 mile loop as somewhat of a compromise. Overall things felt pretty good, but this run was in the NB minimus shoes, which I've been wearing during most of my runs over the past couple weeks. As I mentioned earlier, I've had some tightness in my left knee earlier this week, and today I think I determined that a potential cause is the minimus shoes. It may not be the shoes themselves, but rather the degree to which I've been increasing the mileage in them - it may be too fast. During the last 1/2 mile or so today, I started to get the ever-so-slight feelings of the IT band rubbing again. I had this happen once during the summer when I had to cut short a 20 mile run, and it went away fairly quickly and easily. But in looking back, the coincidence of how my left knee has started to feel tight and the timing of using the new shoes cannot be ignored. So for the next couple weeks, I'm going to go back to the Free Run's and see how things go.
In the evening, I hopped on the bike and did the TrainerRoad Geiger workout. Like all these base building workouts, it's just an interval workout at about 90% FTP. In this case, it was 3 x 12 minute intervals. I took advantage of some of the recovery/warm up periods by getting some ILT time in.
My original thought was to follow up the six week base building with Daniels Phase II (initial quality) for both the bike and the run for six weeks, but another thought might be to spent that time (basically from mid-March until end of April) concentrating on running with two quality runs per week, with the bike workouts being less intense. Then, from May until mid-June, which would normally be Daniels Phase III (transition quality) I could concentrate on quality bike workouts. This accomplishes a few things:
(1) By putting the running first, if I do have a set back, I have more time to absorb it;
(2) Cycling carries over to running more than the opposite, in my experience. The cycling will maintain the aerobic capacity, and therefore all I would need to do for running is maintenance - long runs every so often to maintain endurance, and threshold runs to maintain speed.
(3) The weather will be nicer with the bike quality phase being May/June instead of March/April.
Anyhow, back to massage - it occurred to me that I might be well served by reintroducing myself to the roller. Now that I've had a few massages and have a better idea of what they target in terms of knotted tissue, I might have better luck with using it.
Moving on to today's run -
I wasn't convinced I'd actually go for a run until shortly before I went. I was hesitant because I want to do a long run this weekend, and I want to be better about not doing too much on successive days. On the other hand, I wanted to see how things felt, as it's been several days since my last run. Normally my lunch time runs are six miles, but today I did a shorter 4.3 mile loop as somewhat of a compromise. Overall things felt pretty good, but this run was in the NB minimus shoes, which I've been wearing during most of my runs over the past couple weeks. As I mentioned earlier, I've had some tightness in my left knee earlier this week, and today I think I determined that a potential cause is the minimus shoes. It may not be the shoes themselves, but rather the degree to which I've been increasing the mileage in them - it may be too fast. During the last 1/2 mile or so today, I started to get the ever-so-slight feelings of the IT band rubbing again. I had this happen once during the summer when I had to cut short a 20 mile run, and it went away fairly quickly and easily. But in looking back, the coincidence of how my left knee has started to feel tight and the timing of using the new shoes cannot be ignored. So for the next couple weeks, I'm going to go back to the Free Run's and see how things go.
In the evening, I hopped on the bike and did the TrainerRoad Geiger workout. Like all these base building workouts, it's just an interval workout at about 90% FTP. In this case, it was 3 x 12 minute intervals. I took advantage of some of the recovery/warm up periods by getting some ILT time in.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Yoga - at it again? 2/22/12
I don't normally post yoga workouts because their pretty much the same, and as a maintenance activity, they're just not that exciting.
It's a little different this time, though. Normally I go to yoga once/week - but yesterday I noticed something subtle with my left knee - when I went down stairs, I could feel an ever-so-slight catch of my kneecap on something as my weight beared down on my left leg to lower myself to the next step. It didn't hurt at all, and honestly if I wasn't generally so super-honed and on the lookout for anything odd (as I've been ever since having IT band issues), I probably wouldn't have noticed. I also found it was something repeatable - so it wasn't just a one time thing where something was off and it sorted itself out and was perfectly fine (like any time a joint cracks, for example).
Randomly enough, a coworker recently thought he tore his meniscus, because his kneecap was making a clicking sound when bending his knee. Turns out he has a form of runners knee - in his case, doing Aikido and being thrown to the mat repeatedly caused his quad muscles to spasm and pull his kneecap off. He's currently going through some PT (graston technique - also commonly used for IT band issues) to help loosen the muscles. After only one session, he's noticed a major difference.
The reason I bother mentioning this other person is because his symptoms are very similar to mine, except far more extreme. Until today, I was thinking that my issue might have been an imbalance in muscle strength, as so many injuries are with runners. Even though I had been doing strength training - lunges, squats, etc - maybe it wasn't enough? But hearing how this other persons PT told him it isn't a muscle strength issue, just an imbalance in muscle tightness, and the subsequent immediate results after only one session of the graston technique - it made me think that perhaps it might be a similar situation I'm in.
Regardless - it occurred to me that somewhere between increasing frequency of workouts in the past 4-6 weeks, doing such an intense legs workout last Wednesday, running an intense race on Sunday, and wearing the NB Minimus shoes (as opposed to the Nike Free Run's I had been wearing) - something was clearly starting to cause a problem. I didn't know whether it was a spot of inflammation, or the kneecap being slightly off track, or what. Even as early as Sunday, I was starting to get concerned that I was pushing things a bit too much, and that I should take a solid week of real recovery, not just rest recovery. I decided after the race that I'd take the week off of running, go to yoga at least twice, and go get a deep tissue massage this week. This was actually before I felt the thing with my knee yesterday.
Anyhow - yoga tonight was nothing special in and of itself. I went to yoga on Monday, and today was the second class for the week. However, what is special about it is that when I got home, I tested the knee out a few times, at various points in the evening, on the steps... no catching. Nothing.
I'm really.. beside myself. I mean, seriously... WTF?! I've been telling people recently that yoga is like my magic bullet for healing and recovery, but COME ON - this is just getting rediculous! How the eff is this shit fixing my IT band, healing tendonitis on the top of my right foot (after the marathon in October), and possibly fixing a kneecap? Granted, I'm holding off on declaring victory, and I'm still doing the deep tissue massage I'm scheduled for tomorrow - but considering I felt the knee catch prior to going to yoga, and now I don't feel it - I just find myself continually shaking my head at what this type of cross training appears to be doing for me.
It's clearly the best $13 per hour and a half session I've ever spent. And that not counting all the countless other benefits it's provided in day to day life with increased flexibility and range of motion.
It's a little different this time, though. Normally I go to yoga once/week - but yesterday I noticed something subtle with my left knee - when I went down stairs, I could feel an ever-so-slight catch of my kneecap on something as my weight beared down on my left leg to lower myself to the next step. It didn't hurt at all, and honestly if I wasn't generally so super-honed and on the lookout for anything odd (as I've been ever since having IT band issues), I probably wouldn't have noticed. I also found it was something repeatable - so it wasn't just a one time thing where something was off and it sorted itself out and was perfectly fine (like any time a joint cracks, for example).
Randomly enough, a coworker recently thought he tore his meniscus, because his kneecap was making a clicking sound when bending his knee. Turns out he has a form of runners knee - in his case, doing Aikido and being thrown to the mat repeatedly caused his quad muscles to spasm and pull his kneecap off. He's currently going through some PT (graston technique - also commonly used for IT band issues) to help loosen the muscles. After only one session, he's noticed a major difference.
The reason I bother mentioning this other person is because his symptoms are very similar to mine, except far more extreme. Until today, I was thinking that my issue might have been an imbalance in muscle strength, as so many injuries are with runners. Even though I had been doing strength training - lunges, squats, etc - maybe it wasn't enough? But hearing how this other persons PT told him it isn't a muscle strength issue, just an imbalance in muscle tightness, and the subsequent immediate results after only one session of the graston technique - it made me think that perhaps it might be a similar situation I'm in.
Regardless - it occurred to me that somewhere between increasing frequency of workouts in the past 4-6 weeks, doing such an intense legs workout last Wednesday, running an intense race on Sunday, and wearing the NB Minimus shoes (as opposed to the Nike Free Run's I had been wearing) - something was clearly starting to cause a problem. I didn't know whether it was a spot of inflammation, or the kneecap being slightly off track, or what. Even as early as Sunday, I was starting to get concerned that I was pushing things a bit too much, and that I should take a solid week of real recovery, not just rest recovery. I decided after the race that I'd take the week off of running, go to yoga at least twice, and go get a deep tissue massage this week. This was actually before I felt the thing with my knee yesterday.
Anyhow - yoga tonight was nothing special in and of itself. I went to yoga on Monday, and today was the second class for the week. However, what is special about it is that when I got home, I tested the knee out a few times, at various points in the evening, on the steps... no catching. Nothing.
I'm really.. beside myself. I mean, seriously... WTF?! I've been telling people recently that yoga is like my magic bullet for healing and recovery, but COME ON - this is just getting rediculous! How the eff is this shit fixing my IT band, healing tendonitis on the top of my right foot (after the marathon in October), and possibly fixing a kneecap? Granted, I'm holding off on declaring victory, and I'm still doing the deep tissue massage I'm scheduled for tomorrow - but considering I felt the knee catch prior to going to yoga, and now I don't feel it - I just find myself continually shaking my head at what this type of cross training appears to be doing for me.
It's clearly the best $13 per hour and a half session I've ever spent. And that not counting all the countless other benefits it's provided in day to day life with increased flexibility and range of motion.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Trainerroad Tunnabora workout - 2/21/2012
Even though the past couple weeks has been somewhat of a taper going into this past Sunday's half - and I was intending to start up again full steam ahead into base building, after the race on Sunday I decided I needed to hold back a bit some more. Partially as a result from tight muscles from the legs workout, and partially due to the intensity of the race itself, I have been having a couple moments where I feel like I am pushing the limits of the IT band, and that I should get that straightened out before it potentially develops into something worse. So the plan for this week is to go to Yoga at least twice (already did once yesterday - and as suspected, some poses were hampered a bit due to lingering soreness) as well as a deep tissue massage. I'm waiting until the vast majority of soreness dissipates before the massage, though. I was originally thinking today might be a good day, but my calfs were still a bit too sore to handle that. So I might look at tomorrow or Thursday.
Anyway, I also debated whether to do a cycling workout. I ended up reasoning that the cycling workouts aren't very intense at the moment, and cycling tends to be easier on an IT band than running, so I should be ok. The next workout due up was called Tunnabora (no idea where they get these names), which was basically five intervals of 7 minutes each at varying intensities between about 87% and 92% FTP.
In previous workouts, I had been starting to consider that perhaps I need to up what trainerroad thinks my FTP is - currently it thinks it is 220W, but these workouts might be a tad on the light side. Todays workout only peaked at a HR of 138, for example. But then I remember that this is a base building phase, and the concentration isn't necessarily on making each workout gruelling. Maybe this week, while I'm still in kind of a lower intensity phase, I'll keep it as is - and then next week raise the FTP by like 5W and see what happens.
The only other thing of note is that the lower power portions of the intervals on this workout were done at a lower than typical cadence - in the 80-85 range. Certainly not a mashing gears cadence - but a little practice at a lower cadence can be useful. It may be helpful to be comfortable at high cadences, but supposedly it can be helpful to be comfortable at very low cadences as well.
Anyway, I also debated whether to do a cycling workout. I ended up reasoning that the cycling workouts aren't very intense at the moment, and cycling tends to be easier on an IT band than running, so I should be ok. The next workout due up was called Tunnabora (no idea where they get these names), which was basically five intervals of 7 minutes each at varying intensities between about 87% and 92% FTP.
In previous workouts, I had been starting to consider that perhaps I need to up what trainerroad thinks my FTP is - currently it thinks it is 220W, but these workouts might be a tad on the light side. Todays workout only peaked at a HR of 138, for example. But then I remember that this is a base building phase, and the concentration isn't necessarily on making each workout gruelling. Maybe this week, while I'm still in kind of a lower intensity phase, I'll keep it as is - and then next week raise the FTP by like 5W and see what happens.
The only other thing of note is that the lower power portions of the intervals on this workout were done at a lower than typical cadence - in the 80-85 range. Certainly not a mashing gears cadence - but a little practice at a lower cadence can be useful. It may be helpful to be comfortable at high cadences, but supposedly it can be helpful to be comfortable at very low cadences as well.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Half at the Hamptons - 2/19/2012
Today's workout was pretty straight forward - start running when they say 'GO', don't stop until you cross the finish line, and suffer a sustainable amount in between.
All in all, this race went about as ideally as I could have hoped. At the start, there were four pacers - 7:30, 8, 8:30 and 9. I found my spot between the 7:30 and 8, and for once the pacer was really good. It seems that in any race I've been in, the pacers are impossible to find once the crowd gets beyond the starting corrall. We started off, and of course a bunch of people passed me right off the bat, but when I looked at my watch, I was right in the pace range I was looking for - about 7:30. So the fact I was getting passed didn't bother me because I knew I'd end up passing a bunch of these same people over the course of the race (I find it works better for me to start off the first couple miles on the slower side, until my legs warm up). At about the 1.5 mile mark, I caught sight of the 7:30 pacer, and for the next half mile or so, there was a cluster of 7-8 of us around him. When we passed the two mile mark, we were just about on the money for a 7:30 pace - 14:48 minutes. I was pretty impressed that the pacer was so close to the mark.
At that point, though - I felt like I was ready to start what would be my target race pace of about 7:15-7:20 for the bulk of the run. So I shifted to the outside of the cluster of people, and pushed on ahead. As the miles ticked by, there was one guy who I passed around mile 4 or so, who then passed me shortly thereafter. I resisted the urge to 'burn a match' to pass him, because that would likely get my HR up into the mid 170's - and I was fairly comfortable where I was between 168 and 172 or so. Plus, at this point in the course, there was some terrain. Not a lot, but just enough to notice the pace dropping a tad and/or the HR spiking. I knew from running the course previously that miles ~6 through about ~9 had a couple minor uphills, so I definitely didn't want to push it too much at this point where I still had half the race to go.
Then something wierd happened between miles 6 and 8 - my HR dropped a bit, into the mid 160's, even though my pace was being maintained. In some cases, I could tell there was a gradual downhill, which certainly explains it. But I did make a mental note that I was surprised it was dropping a bit like it was.
For the most part, miles 2-10 were pretty much all the same - pace just a tad behind someone, and then at some point, overtake them. I felt like Cole Trickle in Days of Thunder, when the pit crew thinks Cole is speeding up, and he says 'I'm not speeding up! Everyone else is slowing down!' and then the lap timers confirm it (that he wasn't speeding up). In my case, I was passing people - but when I looked at my pace, I was generally at a 7:12 pace +/- 10 seconds.
It was somewhere around mile 10 that I started making up ground on my old friend (who was always within sight) from mile 4. I passed him and never saw him again, but I think I heard his footsteps behind me for about a mile. At this point I knew I had just enough left in the bag to pick up the pace just a little bit more - around 6:55. My only hope was that I wouldn't burn out - I felt reasonably confident I'd be able to sustain it, but you never really know. I did end up slowing down briefly right around the 12.5 mile mark - but not long after that I must have gotten a shot of adrenaline, because for a few seconds I suddenly felt no pain, and blew by a trio of people at a 6 min/mile pace with less than a half mile to go. Unfortunately, those shots of adrenaline don't last long, and a half mile at a pace on the very top end of your zone is a long time. Long enough for you to flame out and crash pretty hard (which I did in the last 1/4 mile of the Thanksgiving 5 miler this past year). I did crash a bit - I saw my HR into the 180's and my windpipe was not allowing me to get as much air as my body wanted, but it was a 6:45 min/mile pace crash before I was able to muster up another last push into the finish.
The end result was a new PR by about five minutes - a spot on 1:35:00 vs the 1:40:24 from November 2011 (previous PR). Considering I was still a bit sore this morning from the legs workout on Wednesday (!), I'm pretty damn happy about that. I still have a goal of breaking 1:30 for a half in 2012, and I think that is attainable - but it is going to take some solid threshold pace workouts.
Garmin Data
So, what this means is that the ole' VDOT moves up from 45 to 47, which brings my easy running pace down from 9:17 to 8:58, which is much more in line with what I've found my pacing to be at an easy pace HR (mid 140's).
All in all, this race went about as ideally as I could have hoped. At the start, there were four pacers - 7:30, 8, 8:30 and 9. I found my spot between the 7:30 and 8, and for once the pacer was really good. It seems that in any race I've been in, the pacers are impossible to find once the crowd gets beyond the starting corrall. We started off, and of course a bunch of people passed me right off the bat, but when I looked at my watch, I was right in the pace range I was looking for - about 7:30. So the fact I was getting passed didn't bother me because I knew I'd end up passing a bunch of these same people over the course of the race (I find it works better for me to start off the first couple miles on the slower side, until my legs warm up). At about the 1.5 mile mark, I caught sight of the 7:30 pacer, and for the next half mile or so, there was a cluster of 7-8 of us around him. When we passed the two mile mark, we were just about on the money for a 7:30 pace - 14:48 minutes. I was pretty impressed that the pacer was so close to the mark.
At that point, though - I felt like I was ready to start what would be my target race pace of about 7:15-7:20 for the bulk of the run. So I shifted to the outside of the cluster of people, and pushed on ahead. As the miles ticked by, there was one guy who I passed around mile 4 or so, who then passed me shortly thereafter. I resisted the urge to 'burn a match' to pass him, because that would likely get my HR up into the mid 170's - and I was fairly comfortable where I was between 168 and 172 or so. Plus, at this point in the course, there was some terrain. Not a lot, but just enough to notice the pace dropping a tad and/or the HR spiking. I knew from running the course previously that miles ~6 through about ~9 had a couple minor uphills, so I definitely didn't want to push it too much at this point where I still had half the race to go.
Then something wierd happened between miles 6 and 8 - my HR dropped a bit, into the mid 160's, even though my pace was being maintained. In some cases, I could tell there was a gradual downhill, which certainly explains it. But I did make a mental note that I was surprised it was dropping a bit like it was.
For the most part, miles 2-10 were pretty much all the same - pace just a tad behind someone, and then at some point, overtake them. I felt like Cole Trickle in Days of Thunder, when the pit crew thinks Cole is speeding up, and he says 'I'm not speeding up! Everyone else is slowing down!' and then the lap timers confirm it (that he wasn't speeding up). In my case, I was passing people - but when I looked at my pace, I was generally at a 7:12 pace +/- 10 seconds.
It was somewhere around mile 10 that I started making up ground on my old friend (who was always within sight) from mile 4. I passed him and never saw him again, but I think I heard his footsteps behind me for about a mile. At this point I knew I had just enough left in the bag to pick up the pace just a little bit more - around 6:55. My only hope was that I wouldn't burn out - I felt reasonably confident I'd be able to sustain it, but you never really know. I did end up slowing down briefly right around the 12.5 mile mark - but not long after that I must have gotten a shot of adrenaline, because for a few seconds I suddenly felt no pain, and blew by a trio of people at a 6 min/mile pace with less than a half mile to go. Unfortunately, those shots of adrenaline don't last long, and a half mile at a pace on the very top end of your zone is a long time. Long enough for you to flame out and crash pretty hard (which I did in the last 1/4 mile of the Thanksgiving 5 miler this past year). I did crash a bit - I saw my HR into the 180's and my windpipe was not allowing me to get as much air as my body wanted, but it was a 6:45 min/mile pace crash before I was able to muster up another last push into the finish.
The end result was a new PR by about five minutes - a spot on 1:35:00 vs the 1:40:24 from November 2011 (previous PR). Considering I was still a bit sore this morning from the legs workout on Wednesday (!), I'm pretty damn happy about that. I still have a goal of breaking 1:30 for a half in 2012, and I think that is attainable - but it is going to take some solid threshold pace workouts.
Garmin Data
So, what this means is that the ole' VDOT moves up from 45 to 47, which brings my easy running pace down from 9:17 to 8:58, which is much more in line with what I've found my pacing to be at an easy pace HR (mid 140's).
Saturday, February 18, 2012
TrainerRoad Monitor and Eclipse Workouts - 2/18/2012
My original intent was to do a 6 mile lunch run on Friday, but my legs were quite sore from the legs session on Wednesday night, and I don't like to do much running on sore legs like that - sore legs means tight muscles, and tight muscles means extra tension on an IT band that has historically been prone to inflammation. So I limited myself to a trainerroad workout. Next up on the docket, Monitor.
This workout was 6 x 6 minute intervals at about 90% FTP. I've been noticing that these base building workouts are gradually increasing the amount of time spent at this particular training level. I also notice that towards the end, my HR tends to get to around 150. One thing I'm not positive of, though, is how intense these workouts are supposed to be. According to trainer road, the Baxter workout from a few sessions ago is an intensity factor (IF) of 0.66 - about 2/3 as intense as an hour long FTP workout. The next workout, Ericsson, was an IF of 0.79, and Monitor is 0.81. So it would appear that in the grand scheme of things, they are building up the workouts gradually. Until I have more experience, I'm not entirely sure whether I'm actually putting out 80% effort - but I do have to admit that I think it is probably a rather good estimate. I definitely have more in the tank, but the end of the intervals are a welcome break.
Anyway, for this workout, I did take the opportunity to do some ILT's during the recovery periods, so that is why the power output for those sections are off the target - I'm still not yet at the point where a single leg can match the intended target power. Also, at the end of the workout, during the cooldown, I did a couple high cadence one minute long spins. I think I'm finding I like this pattern - it's a way to get some quick high cadence work in (currently working on stabilizing cadence in the 130's range), as well as a good way to drive the HR for blood flush to improve recovery without the muscle strain that would normally be associated with the HR that is achieved.
The next workout (Saturday) was called Eclipse. Being a workout slated for a weekend, it was 90 minutes, as opposed to most of the other workouts that are 60 minutes. This one included 3 x 20 minute 90% FTP intervals, which were definitely more challenging than the previous six and eight minute intervals. During the second and third intervals, there was significant time that the HR was right around 150. Also, the IF for this workout was 0.84, so that has notched up a bit again. The recovery periods were longer than other workouts - five minutes - and I was once again able to get some ILT training in by doing one leg solely during each of the first two breaks. Once again, during the cooldown, there were a couple high cadence blood flushing spins.
This workout was 6 x 6 minute intervals at about 90% FTP. I've been noticing that these base building workouts are gradually increasing the amount of time spent at this particular training level. I also notice that towards the end, my HR tends to get to around 150. One thing I'm not positive of, though, is how intense these workouts are supposed to be. According to trainer road, the Baxter workout from a few sessions ago is an intensity factor (IF) of 0.66 - about 2/3 as intense as an hour long FTP workout. The next workout, Ericsson, was an IF of 0.79, and Monitor is 0.81. So it would appear that in the grand scheme of things, they are building up the workouts gradually. Until I have more experience, I'm not entirely sure whether I'm actually putting out 80% effort - but I do have to admit that I think it is probably a rather good estimate. I definitely have more in the tank, but the end of the intervals are a welcome break.
Anyway, for this workout, I did take the opportunity to do some ILT's during the recovery periods, so that is why the power output for those sections are off the target - I'm still not yet at the point where a single leg can match the intended target power. Also, at the end of the workout, during the cooldown, I did a couple high cadence one minute long spins. I think I'm finding I like this pattern - it's a way to get some quick high cadence work in (currently working on stabilizing cadence in the 130's range), as well as a good way to drive the HR for blood flush to improve recovery without the muscle strain that would normally be associated with the HR that is achieved.
The next workout (Saturday) was called Eclipse. Being a workout slated for a weekend, it was 90 minutes, as opposed to most of the other workouts that are 60 minutes. This one included 3 x 20 minute 90% FTP intervals, which were definitely more challenging than the previous six and eight minute intervals. During the second and third intervals, there was significant time that the HR was right around 150. Also, the IF for this workout was 0.84, so that has notched up a bit again. The recovery periods were longer than other workouts - five minutes - and I was once again able to get some ILT training in by doing one leg solely during each of the first two breaks. Once again, during the cooldown, there were a couple high cadence blood flushing spins.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Travelling workouts - 2/16/12
A few workouts to update on -
Since I was travelling again this week, my workout load was once again reduced. As I may have mentioned before, though - I was in need of a break after several weeks of upping the workout volume. Monday was a rest day after Saturday's half marathon pace test and Sundays cycling trainer workout. While I didn't do yoga in the hotel room again, I did do some general stretching.
On Tuesday I hit the treadmill in the hotel. You'd think that with all the land Ohio has, it wouldn't have been a problem finding some place to run outside. However, I happened to be staying at a hotel that was near the crossroads of an interstate and a state road, so there was no option I could see for getting to a good running area without risking life and limb in getting out of the congestion. I even drove around for a while after work looking for a place, and considered running along the paths of a local cemetary - but even that would have been difficult to get to with the lack of shoulders. Plus, it was cold and rainy out - so I decided to give up on the outdoor idea and just hit the treadmill. I ended up doing 45 minutes, but I'm not sure of the distance. The treadmill registered about 4.6 miles, and claimed a pace of almost 10 minute miles - but I've always found treadmills to be off. Regardless, the idea was to get my HR into the easy pace zone (140's) for about 45-50 minutes. At the 45 minute mark, I decided that was enough. Treadmills bore me to death.
On Wednesday I did the P90x legs & back routine (minus the back) in the hotel room. I didn't have a chance to do my circuit training during the weekend, and I want to be really good about hitting the legs on a regular basis not only to increase the power/weight ratio, but also to balance the muscle development to keep everything... balanced. Since many running and cycling injuries come about due to an imbalance, where something gets pulled in one direction or the other due to overdeveloped muscles in one area - it seems like a lot of running injury PT is based on addressing that imbalance. Over the summer I had been working on the legs on a regular basis, and it never seemed to hinder me, and I stayed uninjured - so I don't want to mess with success. The nice thing about the P90X legs stuff is that there is no equipment needed - just all variations on lunges and squats.
Due to getting home early today (Thursday), I was able to squeeze a couple workouts in, which was a nice surprise. The next bike trainer workout was called Ericsson, and was basically another interval-type workout. After some spin-up for warm up, it goes through 4 x 8 minute intervals at a tad below FTP. So in this case, it was about 200W (or, at least what registered as 200W based on the published power curve for my trainer). The description for the workout also mentioned six minutes of ILT (isolated leg training), but there were no instructions as to where that was. After the workout was over, I realized there was six minutes of downtime between each interval - so that would have been a good time to do one minute of ILT for each leg. Oops - next time, I suppose. Although the TR link above doesn't show it, the cadence varied quite a bit because the power targets changed ever so slightly, so it was easier to adjust cadence to match as opposed to fidgeting with finding another gear ratio. Actually, the garmin link shows the cadence a bit better.
Since I had most all afternoon, I also decided to throw a brick run in after the bike session. I initially wanted to do around six miles, but I brought the dogs with me to get them some exercise, and they started lagging behind at about two miles. I made them go one more round for a total of about three and a quarter miles. Although it wasn't as long as I initially wanted, I still got the benefit of doing a brick run (always good in itself), and I was thinking at the time that it left open the possibility of a six miler tomorrow during the day. However, my legs are starting to feel pretty sore from the legs workout yesterday - so depending on how things go, a run tomorrow might be out. We'll see.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Half marathon pace test and TR Baxter workout - 2/12/2012
Quick update due to limited time.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Saturday was set up nicely for a half marathon pace test run. My half marathon PR is 1:40:26 set last November. Prior to that, my half marathons (Lowell Sun in October '08 and '10, Worcester half in June '11) all clocked in around 1:53. So going down to 1:40, taking 13 minutes (a full minute/mile) was pretty significant. Since November, I haven't done much for speed work - just a couple threshold runs towards the end of the 2011 year, but nothing since then.
While this test run wasn't a full 13.1 miles, it still gave me a pretty good idea of what kind of performance I could expect next week. With an avg HR of 164, a pace of 7:15 min/miles, it certainly blows the doors off the 169 avg HR from November, where I did 7:39 min/miles. However, that course was relatively hilly - so I'm sure a large portion of the increased HR and apparent speed increases since then is difference in terrain.
The most notable thing I took away from this run was how I felt after about eight miles. I felt like I was starting to bonk a bit - the legs felt sluggish and the HR started to creep up. So like the other week's 20 miler where I sped up rather than slowed down - I did the same thing this time. Throughout the remaining three miles, I started to notice a trend - when I'd take a swig of gatorade, some of that sluggish feeling in my legs would go away. The remarkable thing was how quickly it happened. It wasn't instantaneous - but I feel like there were 2-3 times where I'd down a gulp, and certainly within 30 seconds I'd feel more energized again. That feeling would last for a few minutes, then I'd feel sluggish again. Whether it was actually that quickly that the sugars from the gatorade took effect, or whether it was just my mind playing tricks on me, I don't know. It is something I want to look into in the future and experiment around with a bit.
So then, the following day (Sunday), I did the trainerroad Baxter workout. This was the last repeat workout ever since switching over to basing workouts on power. The main idea with this workout is to find a single gear ratio, and stick with it throughout the whole workout. I'm not sure whether it was designed to be this way, but in order to have a decent cadence on the lower power portions, I was at a lower gear than I'd have expected. As a result, the HR was relatively low. On the other hand, the cadence did get up to my max comfort cadence of just a bit higher than 110. So while this was not necessarily a taxing aerobic workout, I looked at it as a way to get comfortable with different cadence rates, and trying to figure out how to relax and minimize any bouncing at the higher cadences.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Saturday was set up nicely for a half marathon pace test run. My half marathon PR is 1:40:26 set last November. Prior to that, my half marathons (Lowell Sun in October '08 and '10, Worcester half in June '11) all clocked in around 1:53. So going down to 1:40, taking 13 minutes (a full minute/mile) was pretty significant. Since November, I haven't done much for speed work - just a couple threshold runs towards the end of the 2011 year, but nothing since then.
While this test run wasn't a full 13.1 miles, it still gave me a pretty good idea of what kind of performance I could expect next week. With an avg HR of 164, a pace of 7:15 min/miles, it certainly blows the doors off the 169 avg HR from November, where I did 7:39 min/miles. However, that course was relatively hilly - so I'm sure a large portion of the increased HR and apparent speed increases since then is difference in terrain.
The most notable thing I took away from this run was how I felt after about eight miles. I felt like I was starting to bonk a bit - the legs felt sluggish and the HR started to creep up. So like the other week's 20 miler where I sped up rather than slowed down - I did the same thing this time. Throughout the remaining three miles, I started to notice a trend - when I'd take a swig of gatorade, some of that sluggish feeling in my legs would go away. The remarkable thing was how quickly it happened. It wasn't instantaneous - but I feel like there were 2-3 times where I'd down a gulp, and certainly within 30 seconds I'd feel more energized again. That feeling would last for a few minutes, then I'd feel sluggish again. Whether it was actually that quickly that the sugars from the gatorade took effect, or whether it was just my mind playing tricks on me, I don't know. It is something I want to look into in the future and experiment around with a bit.
So then, the following day (Sunday), I did the trainerroad Baxter workout. This was the last repeat workout ever since switching over to basing workouts on power. The main idea with this workout is to find a single gear ratio, and stick with it throughout the whole workout. I'm not sure whether it was designed to be this way, but in order to have a decent cadence on the lower power portions, I was at a lower gear than I'd have expected. As a result, the HR was relatively low. On the other hand, the cadence did get up to my max comfort cadence of just a bit higher than 110. So while this was not necessarily a taxing aerobic workout, I looked at it as a way to get comfortable with different cadence rates, and trying to figure out how to relax and minimize any bouncing at the higher cadences.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
TR Gayley workout - 2/9/12
This workout ended up being a bonus and expected workout.
I was travelling this week from Monday evening and due to return Friday morning at 12:30am - however I managed to get a flight out of Atlanta four hours earlier than planned, so I was able get home for 10pm and squeeze in a quick bike workout. This actually set me up nicely for my workouts the entire weekend - due to the limited amount of time I had, I was having a hard time choosing what combination of workouts to go with: a potential mid-day Friday 6 mile run, a weekend half marathon pace run of 10-11 miles, my strength training workout, yoga, and cycling workouts. By being able to get the cycling workout in on Thursday evening, I was then able to go to Yoga on Friday evening (which is something I was feeling I sorely needed), I could do the half marathon pace run on Saturday, and then on Sunday I could do the strength training and possibly also the next cycling workout. The mid-day Friday run was low priority as I had already run twice this past week, and I felt like the HM pace run was more important with the upcoming half marathon race next weekend.
So the trainerroad Gayley workout is a simple warmup followed by 4 x 8 minute intervals at FTP (since I've decided to throw my trust into the benefits of power-based cycling workouts). Based on the 8-minute test workout from last weekend, this FTP value ended up being about 220W with my setup. The initial spinning and warmup seemed too easy, but I stayed with the suggested power output. Given that I was generally feeling rather tight throughout the whole week (and thus the real need for yoga), I was just as happy to do some low intensity spinning to make sure I was warming up gently enough. The first interval seemed trivially easy initially, but about six minutes into it with the HR getting into the high 130's and still climbing, I knew that subsequent intervals would be perfectly adequate for base building.
For the most part, the intervals ended with my HR in the mid-high 140's for a couple minutes. The biggest complaint I have with the workout is that it ends rather suddenly, with only a minute of cooldown after the last interval. Instead of ending there, I just did a couple 1 minute long high cadence (~130) low gear spins - I find that this brings the HR up to the 140's nicely for a blood flush, but because it is at minimal resistance, there is no significant additional muscle fatigue. It occured to me that this might be a possible strategy to help with transition from bike to run in the future - during the last mile or so of the bike leg in a triathlon, I could spin at high cadence a bit to help refresh the legs. At some point I'll have to give it a test.
I was travelling this week from Monday evening and due to return Friday morning at 12:30am - however I managed to get a flight out of Atlanta four hours earlier than planned, so I was able get home for 10pm and squeeze in a quick bike workout. This actually set me up nicely for my workouts the entire weekend - due to the limited amount of time I had, I was having a hard time choosing what combination of workouts to go with: a potential mid-day Friday 6 mile run, a weekend half marathon pace run of 10-11 miles, my strength training workout, yoga, and cycling workouts. By being able to get the cycling workout in on Thursday evening, I was then able to go to Yoga on Friday evening (which is something I was feeling I sorely needed), I could do the half marathon pace run on Saturday, and then on Sunday I could do the strength training and possibly also the next cycling workout. The mid-day Friday run was low priority as I had already run twice this past week, and I felt like the HM pace run was more important with the upcoming half marathon race next weekend.
So the trainerroad Gayley workout is a simple warmup followed by 4 x 8 minute intervals at FTP (since I've decided to throw my trust into the benefits of power-based cycling workouts). Based on the 8-minute test workout from last weekend, this FTP value ended up being about 220W with my setup. The initial spinning and warmup seemed too easy, but I stayed with the suggested power output. Given that I was generally feeling rather tight throughout the whole week (and thus the real need for yoga), I was just as happy to do some low intensity spinning to make sure I was warming up gently enough. The first interval seemed trivially easy initially, but about six minutes into it with the HR getting into the high 130's and still climbing, I knew that subsequent intervals would be perfectly adequate for base building.
For the most part, the intervals ended with my HR in the mid-high 140's for a couple minutes. The biggest complaint I have with the workout is that it ends rather suddenly, with only a minute of cooldown after the last interval. Instead of ending there, I just did a couple 1 minute long high cadence (~130) low gear spins - I find that this brings the HR up to the 140's nicely for a blood flush, but because it is at minimal resistance, there is no significant additional muscle fatigue. It occured to me that this might be a possible strategy to help with transition from bike to run in the future - during the last mile or so of the bike leg in a triathlon, I could spin at high cadence a bit to help refresh the legs. At some point I'll have to give it a test.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Six mile mid-week LSD run's - 2/8/2012
Monday afternoon saw another six mile mid-day lunch run. This one ended up being a tad slower than previous runs, which I was OK with because of the 20 miler on Saturday, and the TrainerRoad power test on Sunday night. Not a whole lot exciting or different to say about this run., except that I did it on Monday instead of Tuesday because I was flying out Monday afternoon/evening for work - and the remaining weekly schedule meant that my best bet to get the miles in that I wanted would be to run on Monday. I figured that if I ended up at a place where running wasn't going to be easy (ie, urban setting or not-so-great area) while travelling, I should probably take the safe option and run Monday before leaving, even though I'd normally rather have taken it as a rest day. Oh! The thing I did do, though, was wear the compression pants afterwards. Since this run was coming on the heels of 20 miles and a bike workout, I figured I mine as well do everything I could do maximize recovery. Not sure what effect it may have had.
Tuesday evening, though, I had to do at least something to make up for skipping Monday's yoga class. So, after I got back to the hotel, I cranked the heat as high as it would go (which was only 85F), let the shower run for a while to get the humidity up, filled the tub with hot water and soaked in it for about 10 minutes to artificially warm the muscles, and then did my own Bikram Yoga routine in the hotel room. It was nowhere near as good a workout as I get in a heated studio, but it was better than nothing.
Today (Wednesday) after work, I was able to get another six miler in. This one was wierd. First - the entire first half was all gentle downhill, so my pace was relatively quick for my HR. Usually I see in the 8:30-9 min/miles for the high 140's - this was a good 45 seconds faster than that. My concern was that on the way back, my HR would be relatively high unless I slowed down. To my surprise, I didn't have to slow down all that much to keep my HR in check. I suspect that not having done any bike workouts, which I've been doing a lot in the past couple weeks in addition to running, meant I wasn't as fatigued.
To be honest, though - I really needed this as a rest week. I've gone from averaging ~2 hrs/wk from mid-October through mid-December, and ramped up from 5 hrs/wk to 10 hrs/wk from the beginning of the year through last week. I was originally going to take last week as a rest week, but my work travel plans changed, making this week (and actually next week) instead. It actually sets up nicely for a taper leading into the Hampton half on the 19th. For a while I wasn't sure how I was going to approach that race - whether to treat it as a training run or try to PR. Since I seem to have a taper built in to my schedule, I'm thinking I'll try to PR it - especially since I will be avoiding a long run this weekend due to having done 17 miles the other week followed by 20 this past weekend. Need to lay off the long runs for a couple weeks - but I may see what kind of pace I can maintain with a threshold run this weekend. That could give me a decent idea as to whether a PR is in the cards or not.
Tuesday evening, though, I had to do at least something to make up for skipping Monday's yoga class. So, after I got back to the hotel, I cranked the heat as high as it would go (which was only 85F), let the shower run for a while to get the humidity up, filled the tub with hot water and soaked in it for about 10 minutes to artificially warm the muscles, and then did my own Bikram Yoga routine in the hotel room. It was nowhere near as good a workout as I get in a heated studio, but it was better than nothing.
Today (Wednesday) after work, I was able to get another six miler in. This one was wierd. First - the entire first half was all gentle downhill, so my pace was relatively quick for my HR. Usually I see in the 8:30-9 min/miles for the high 140's - this was a good 45 seconds faster than that. My concern was that on the way back, my HR would be relatively high unless I slowed down. To my surprise, I didn't have to slow down all that much to keep my HR in check. I suspect that not having done any bike workouts, which I've been doing a lot in the past couple weeks in addition to running, meant I wasn't as fatigued.
To be honest, though - I really needed this as a rest week. I've gone from averaging ~2 hrs/wk from mid-October through mid-December, and ramped up from 5 hrs/wk to 10 hrs/wk from the beginning of the year through last week. I was originally going to take last week as a rest week, but my work travel plans changed, making this week (and actually next week) instead. It actually sets up nicely for a taper leading into the Hampton half on the 19th. For a while I wasn't sure how I was going to approach that race - whether to treat it as a training run or try to PR. Since I seem to have a taper built in to my schedule, I'm thinking I'll try to PR it - especially since I will be avoiding a long run this weekend due to having done 17 miles the other week followed by 20 this past weekend. Need to lay off the long runs for a couple weeks - but I may see what kind of pace I can maintain with a threshold run this weekend. That could give me a decent idea as to whether a PR is in the cards or not.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
TR - 8 minute test - 2/5/2012
So far, my workouts with trainerroad had been based on HR. My thinking was that since I'm doing a base building program, I should keep the HR under a certain level to build aerobic capacity - and that thinking was brought over from the running world. However, it appears that cyclists prefer to use power, and train based on that. So to try and reconcile the difference in approach I was using to the one generally preferred by cyclists, I asked the guys over @ trainerroad what their take was on situations where I'm not necessarily trying to build power for a time trial, but instead a longer distance triathlon. That thread can be found here.
I gave it some thought, and decided that I mine as well give it a shot. If they have a base building program, and they've gotten input from cycling trainers, and that base building program calls for prioritizing power over HR - then I had a choice: I could constantly try to figure out the optimal HR ranges for every workout on trainerroad from here on out, or I could give in and go with power. I ended up deciding on the latter - partially because I am not starting out totally from scratch, and partially because I'm going to be working on aerobic base in running, so there should be at least some carryover. Lastly - the base building program calls for three workouts a week, so there'd be time available in the schedule for the long, more traditional base and aerobic building workouts.
So, since I'd be going to using power, I figured I mine as well start over in the program, which meant going back to the 8 minute test. My default profile had an FTP of 200 W, so the targets throughout the workout were based on that - however I remembered from the first time doing this workout that it provides you with an updated FTP at the end - so rather than stick with the target, I wasn't afraid to exceed where I could, as long as I could hold in. In the end, both 8 minute efforts were showing a power of about 250W. The 8 minute efforts seemed to go through four phases for me - the first two minutes was building power to a degree that felt just a little harder than comfortable. The next two minutes was a constant but noticable drain, progressing to comfortably hard. The 3rd set of two minutes got into wind sucking mode where it was easiest to put my head down, close my eyes and pretend it wasn't me putting that effort in. The final two minutes was holding on for dear life, knowing I was going to put out all effort for the last 30 seconds, which made dealing with seconds 31-120 a tad more bearable.
In the end, it gave me an updated FTP number of 220W, which sounds reasonable to me for the setup I have. However, I wouldn't be surprised if its accuracy is artificially high, as I've read various things about the accuracy of the Fluid2 power curve. But based on the work I've done on the trainer so far, I figured my FTP would end up showing somewhere between 200W and 250W. My HR got up into the high 160's, which is about as high as it's gotten on the bike, so I figure it was pretty damn close to a max effort for 8 minutes. Regardless of the accuracy, though - at least now I feel like I have a good metric to use as a baseline for workouts.
I gave it some thought, and decided that I mine as well give it a shot. If they have a base building program, and they've gotten input from cycling trainers, and that base building program calls for prioritizing power over HR - then I had a choice: I could constantly try to figure out the optimal HR ranges for every workout on trainerroad from here on out, or I could give in and go with power. I ended up deciding on the latter - partially because I am not starting out totally from scratch, and partially because I'm going to be working on aerobic base in running, so there should be at least some carryover. Lastly - the base building program calls for three workouts a week, so there'd be time available in the schedule for the long, more traditional base and aerobic building workouts.
So, since I'd be going to using power, I figured I mine as well start over in the program, which meant going back to the 8 minute test. My default profile had an FTP of 200 W, so the targets throughout the workout were based on that - however I remembered from the first time doing this workout that it provides you with an updated FTP at the end - so rather than stick with the target, I wasn't afraid to exceed where I could, as long as I could hold in. In the end, both 8 minute efforts were showing a power of about 250W. The 8 minute efforts seemed to go through four phases for me - the first two minutes was building power to a degree that felt just a little harder than comfortable. The next two minutes was a constant but noticable drain, progressing to comfortably hard. The 3rd set of two minutes got into wind sucking mode where it was easiest to put my head down, close my eyes and pretend it wasn't me putting that effort in. The final two minutes was holding on for dear life, knowing I was going to put out all effort for the last 30 seconds, which made dealing with seconds 31-120 a tad more bearable.
In the end, it gave me an updated FTP number of 220W, which sounds reasonable to me for the setup I have. However, I wouldn't be surprised if its accuracy is artificially high, as I've read various things about the accuracy of the Fluid2 power curve. But based on the work I've done on the trainer so far, I figured my FTP would end up showing somewhere between 200W and 250W. My HR got up into the high 160's, which is about as high as it's gotten on the bike, so I figure it was pretty damn close to a max effort for 8 minutes. Regardless of the accuracy, though - at least now I feel like I have a good metric to use as a baseline for workouts.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
6 mile lunch run and 20 mile LSD - 2/4/2012
Friday's run was another six mile lunch run, as I've recently determined that I'm going to need at least two runs of this distance during the week in order to meet my weekly mileage running goal. Even then, three total runs per week might be a bit light, but it may be all I can really handle at this point in time due to having to balance cycling time as well as injury prevention (ie, yoga and strength training).
There are a few things I've thought of that are nice with this set up. First off, I can get two workouts in on a single day - the lunch run, and some trainer time in the evening. As long as only one, max, is a real effort workout, that should work out nicely most of the time. Another nice thing is that the hour long lunch break is a good amount of time for threshold training, or tempo runs. So that means when the time comes, I have the flexibility to do a speedwork session during the day, when I'll have several hours of at least being awake and active (to improve recovery) as opposed to doing the speed workout and then going to bed. The latter would result in a lot of residual soreness the next day. Tacked on to that is that I can wear compression pants to help with recovery - they may not be as immediately beneficial as an ice bath, but they are better than nothing. Of course, all this is predicated on the assumption that I'm not travelling that week. However, even when that happens, the forced week of relative rest is usually welcome.
For this weekend, I had been debating what to do for running. On one hand, one of Jack Daniels' rules is to limit long runs to 2.5 hours - and since last weeks 17 miler came in at 2:38, part of me wondered whether I should limit long runs to 17 miles until I picked up some speed. On the other hand, Jack Daniels also tries to squeeze training philosophies for distances from 800m to the full marathon into his book, and obviously there are going to be some things that apply for one distance and not for the other. If a slow marathoner were to limit long runs to 2.5 hours, that'd be a lot of extra stress come race day, when that same person would likely be out for more than four hours. Also, there are a couple places in his book where he lays out a guideline (such as the importance of threshold runs), but then admits to agreeing with marathoners who have a different take on the usefulness of such things. On top of that, he is only speaking to running - with a full marathon being the longest event. In my case, I have to consider starting a marathon after 9 or 10 hours of prior efforts. So, long story short - I've had it in my head that I'd like to run something in the 20-25 mile range quite often - possible twice per month - in order to build up as much stamina as possible. My primary concern, obviously, would be injury. However, I feel I stand a good chance of success due to a few factors: yoga, running 3x per week and not 5x (so there is extra rest), and my still-forming plan to alternate bike heavy and run heavy weeks where that long run might signify the end of a run-heavy week.
So, back to this weekend - I ended up doing a 20 miler. Normally I wouldn't think to do such a thing on the heels of a 17 miler the previous weekend, nevermind having just done six yesterday (when I rarely run multiple days in a row), but I decided to give it a shot since this coming week, do to work travels, would end up being a low running mileage week anyway, and I'd have a lot of chance to stretch and pamper the legs a bit if it turned out to be too much. Also, I decided to wear the compression pants as well. Previously, I'd only worn them during the Monson half and the Thanksgiving day five miler, and as I was putting the pants on, that fact and the fact that they were both PR's dawned on me. The reason I wanted to wear them today was because I was already pushing the limits a bit, so if the compression pants help with maintaining form and keeping muscles from getting as inflammed/sore/tight - I'd want every advantage I could get. Plus, having a sense of what the 17 miler last week felt like, I felt like this would be about as decent a comparison run as I could get.
Overall, the run went real well. In fact, at about mile 13, I even thought about picking up the pace for the rest of the run. I started to (for about a mile), but then became a bit afraid of crashing a few miles down the road, so I opted to slow back down again. Around mile 17, though, things started to slow down and start grinding, and the HR started to climb out of the aerobic zone. It was getting similar to what happened at around mile 22-23 during the marathon. At that point on that day, I slowed down to try and keep the HR under control - but I had a hard time doing so. So, knowing that tendency, I actually decided to speed up today. If my HR was going to be at the threshold or higher, I mine as well get some of the benefit of speed. So for mile 17, until the scheduled walk break at 18, I gradually picked up the pace until the last 1/4 mile or so was at about 7 min/mile. I took the walk break at 18, did a quick squat stretch of the quads, and started off again. The HR stayed down for about 3/4 of a mile when it started creeping back up again - so once I hit mile 19, I picked up the pace again until the end.
So, the fact that I was able to extend distance by three miles and feel good enough to kick up the speed towards the end tells me that either my conditioning is coming back (and as one would expect, much more quickly than it did the first time around), or that the compression pants help quite a bit. Probably a mix of both, as most things are. In the interest of recovery, I've been wearing the compression pants, and plan to continue wearing them until tomorrow.
There are a few things I've thought of that are nice with this set up. First off, I can get two workouts in on a single day - the lunch run, and some trainer time in the evening. As long as only one, max, is a real effort workout, that should work out nicely most of the time. Another nice thing is that the hour long lunch break is a good amount of time for threshold training, or tempo runs. So that means when the time comes, I have the flexibility to do a speedwork session during the day, when I'll have several hours of at least being awake and active (to improve recovery) as opposed to doing the speed workout and then going to bed. The latter would result in a lot of residual soreness the next day. Tacked on to that is that I can wear compression pants to help with recovery - they may not be as immediately beneficial as an ice bath, but they are better than nothing. Of course, all this is predicated on the assumption that I'm not travelling that week. However, even when that happens, the forced week of relative rest is usually welcome.
For this weekend, I had been debating what to do for running. On one hand, one of Jack Daniels' rules is to limit long runs to 2.5 hours - and since last weeks 17 miler came in at 2:38, part of me wondered whether I should limit long runs to 17 miles until I picked up some speed. On the other hand, Jack Daniels also tries to squeeze training philosophies for distances from 800m to the full marathon into his book, and obviously there are going to be some things that apply for one distance and not for the other. If a slow marathoner were to limit long runs to 2.5 hours, that'd be a lot of extra stress come race day, when that same person would likely be out for more than four hours. Also, there are a couple places in his book where he lays out a guideline (such as the importance of threshold runs), but then admits to agreeing with marathoners who have a different take on the usefulness of such things. On top of that, he is only speaking to running - with a full marathon being the longest event. In my case, I have to consider starting a marathon after 9 or 10 hours of prior efforts. So, long story short - I've had it in my head that I'd like to run something in the 20-25 mile range quite often - possible twice per month - in order to build up as much stamina as possible. My primary concern, obviously, would be injury. However, I feel I stand a good chance of success due to a few factors: yoga, running 3x per week and not 5x (so there is extra rest), and my still-forming plan to alternate bike heavy and run heavy weeks where that long run might signify the end of a run-heavy week.
So, back to this weekend - I ended up doing a 20 miler. Normally I wouldn't think to do such a thing on the heels of a 17 miler the previous weekend, nevermind having just done six yesterday (when I rarely run multiple days in a row), but I decided to give it a shot since this coming week, do to work travels, would end up being a low running mileage week anyway, and I'd have a lot of chance to stretch and pamper the legs a bit if it turned out to be too much. Also, I decided to wear the compression pants as well. Previously, I'd only worn them during the Monson half and the Thanksgiving day five miler, and as I was putting the pants on, that fact and the fact that they were both PR's dawned on me. The reason I wanted to wear them today was because I was already pushing the limits a bit, so if the compression pants help with maintaining form and keeping muscles from getting as inflammed/sore/tight - I'd want every advantage I could get. Plus, having a sense of what the 17 miler last week felt like, I felt like this would be about as decent a comparison run as I could get.
Overall, the run went real well. In fact, at about mile 13, I even thought about picking up the pace for the rest of the run. I started to (for about a mile), but then became a bit afraid of crashing a few miles down the road, so I opted to slow back down again. Around mile 17, though, things started to slow down and start grinding, and the HR started to climb out of the aerobic zone. It was getting similar to what happened at around mile 22-23 during the marathon. At that point on that day, I slowed down to try and keep the HR under control - but I had a hard time doing so. So, knowing that tendency, I actually decided to speed up today. If my HR was going to be at the threshold or higher, I mine as well get some of the benefit of speed. So for mile 17, until the scheduled walk break at 18, I gradually picked up the pace until the last 1/4 mile or so was at about 7 min/mile. I took the walk break at 18, did a quick squat stretch of the quads, and started off again. The HR stayed down for about 3/4 of a mile when it started creeping back up again - so once I hit mile 19, I picked up the pace again until the end.
So, the fact that I was able to extend distance by three miles and feel good enough to kick up the speed towards the end tells me that either my conditioning is coming back (and as one would expect, much more quickly than it did the first time around), or that the compression pants help quite a bit. Probably a mix of both, as most things are. In the interest of recovery, I've been wearing the compression pants, and plan to continue wearing them until tomorrow.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Trainerroad Baxter Workout - 2/2/2012
So this workout was one intended to keep using the same gear the entire
workout, using cadence to alter the intensity. It made for an interesting
workout. Since I'm using HR as the baseline for intensity (more on that in a
minute) - it created a dilemma: do I try to follow the plotted intensity with my
HR (which naturally increases throughout the workout, which would thus make later 'high cadence' spurts be at a lower cadence?), or say screw the HR and
go with cadence. Sometimes I did one, sometimes I did the other.
Going back to the HR, though - the folks @ trainerroad do say they prefer using 'virtualpower' as the intensity setting (virtualpower being the correlated power output based on the trainer being used, in leiu of an actual power meter). The thing I'm not sure of is that I'm doing this training for endurance, not necessarily a 45 minute time trial. So if I were going for a time trial, I could see wanting to build power, and would be less concerned about having my HR reach some high number or going out of the aerobic zone. In coming from a running world, the idea with base building is to keep the intesity low to stay in the aerobic zone. In fact, at the beginning of this workout, they say that the purpose of the workout is aerobic conditioning - which makes me believe that I would want to prioritize on keeping the HR lower.
Anyhow, the cadence usually ended up between 105-115, which is on the higher end of my comfort zone. However I recently found out that spinter cyclists can have a cadence of 160 (!) - so it might be useful to get comfortable at higher cadences. Fortunately this workout seemed to be reasonably effective for this, as I felt more stable at the higher cadences after a while once I figured out how to relax the legs and hips a bit.
http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/22184
Going back to the HR, though - the folks @ trainerroad do say they prefer using 'virtualpower' as the intensity setting (virtualpower being the correlated power output based on the trainer being used, in leiu of an actual power meter). The thing I'm not sure of is that I'm doing this training for endurance, not necessarily a 45 minute time trial. So if I were going for a time trial, I could see wanting to build power, and would be less concerned about having my HR reach some high number or going out of the aerobic zone. In coming from a running world, the idea with base building is to keep the intesity low to stay in the aerobic zone. In fact, at the beginning of this workout, they say that the purpose of the workout is aerobic conditioning - which makes me believe that I would want to prioritize on keeping the HR lower.
Anyhow, the cadence usually ended up between 105-115, which is on the higher end of my comfort zone. However I recently found out that spinter cyclists can have a cadence of 160 (!) - so it might be useful to get comfortable at higher cadences. Fortunately this workout seemed to be reasonably effective for this, as I felt more stable at the higher cadences after a while once I figured out how to relax the legs and hips a bit.
http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/22184
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
6 mile lunch run & 25 mile trainer spin - 2/1/2012
Double session today!
I did another lunch-break run today - same loop as last time. Once again, it was at an easy pace - at this point I'm more interested in seeing what kind of mileage volume I can accumulate and build up. Also, I knew I'd be hitting the trainer this evening (and likely doing another lunch run tomorrow), so I definitely wanted to take todays run pretty easy and keep it low stress.
I ran this run in my new NB Minimus road shoes. It was my second run in them, but the jury is still out. I may have mentioned this before in another post, but they seem to have a bump of extra material on the outside of the foot, about mid-foot. I'm not positive, but I think it may be something to encourage forefoot striking. While it's easy enough to forefoot strike, my concern is that at LSD paces, I tend to naturally fall into more of a mid-foot strike, where I can feel that bump. I'm hoping that it won't cause any issues; I can tell you one thing for certain - the second I start feeling something a little odd that persists through multiple runs in those shoes, they are getting tossed. So I'm not totally convinced they will work for me - but I do like that they invoke more calf muscle, and due to the 4 mm heel to toe drop (vs the 7 mm for my Nike Free Runs), they are the next step in the direction of barefoot/minimalist running (although they are anything but minimalist shoes - the drop is only 4 mm, but there is definitely a sole to them).
For my cycling workout, I wanted to do something relatively easy, so I ended up just doing a non-structured 90 minute workout. The goal was to keep a HR of around 145 - so it was a simple and straight forward 10-15 minute progressive warmup, and then settling into a speed of about 17-17.5 mph, resulting in a power of about 200W for 90 minutes right around the target HR. What amazed me about this workout was how it felt. I wasn't necessarily faster than a previous 90 minute spin, and my HR wasn't lower (in fact, my HR was a tad higher - but then again it was a double session today) - but my legs really felt different on the pedals. Previously, I would say that I was 75% using an up/down motion on the pedals - especially if I wasn't thinking about it. If I thought about it, I could get the muscles to apply pressure on the pedals throughout the cycle, but I could also tell that more leg muscles were firing than was necessary. End result was that there was a lot of fighting amongst the muscles. However, just a couple sessions of easy one leg drills seems to have really done a lot to teach the muscles how to fire, and when to fire so that they could apply pressure when necessary, and relax when necessary. So instead of 75% up/down, it seems almost flipped around - 75% circular with just some residual up/down that needs to be tweaked. I actually found myself with my mind drifting a bit (I was watching episodes of 24, afterall), but when I'd return my attention, I was still actually more 'cycling', instead of 'pistoning'.
So while my speed and HR may not reflect it, I think thats a very positive step - so it may be that the primary benefit of this workout isn't the aerobic benefits, but one more of cycling efficiency, which will pay dividends down the road.
I did another lunch-break run today - same loop as last time. Once again, it was at an easy pace - at this point I'm more interested in seeing what kind of mileage volume I can accumulate and build up. Also, I knew I'd be hitting the trainer this evening (and likely doing another lunch run tomorrow), so I definitely wanted to take todays run pretty easy and keep it low stress.
I ran this run in my new NB Minimus road shoes. It was my second run in them, but the jury is still out. I may have mentioned this before in another post, but they seem to have a bump of extra material on the outside of the foot, about mid-foot. I'm not positive, but I think it may be something to encourage forefoot striking. While it's easy enough to forefoot strike, my concern is that at LSD paces, I tend to naturally fall into more of a mid-foot strike, where I can feel that bump. I'm hoping that it won't cause any issues; I can tell you one thing for certain - the second I start feeling something a little odd that persists through multiple runs in those shoes, they are getting tossed. So I'm not totally convinced they will work for me - but I do like that they invoke more calf muscle, and due to the 4 mm heel to toe drop (vs the 7 mm for my Nike Free Runs), they are the next step in the direction of barefoot/minimalist running (although they are anything but minimalist shoes - the drop is only 4 mm, but there is definitely a sole to them).
For my cycling workout, I wanted to do something relatively easy, so I ended up just doing a non-structured 90 minute workout. The goal was to keep a HR of around 145 - so it was a simple and straight forward 10-15 minute progressive warmup, and then settling into a speed of about 17-17.5 mph, resulting in a power of about 200W for 90 minutes right around the target HR. What amazed me about this workout was how it felt. I wasn't necessarily faster than a previous 90 minute spin, and my HR wasn't lower (in fact, my HR was a tad higher - but then again it was a double session today) - but my legs really felt different on the pedals. Previously, I would say that I was 75% using an up/down motion on the pedals - especially if I wasn't thinking about it. If I thought about it, I could get the muscles to apply pressure on the pedals throughout the cycle, but I could also tell that more leg muscles were firing than was necessary. End result was that there was a lot of fighting amongst the muscles. However, just a couple sessions of easy one leg drills seems to have really done a lot to teach the muscles how to fire, and when to fire so that they could apply pressure when necessary, and relax when necessary. So instead of 75% up/down, it seems almost flipped around - 75% circular with just some residual up/down that needs to be tweaked. I actually found myself with my mind drifting a bit (I was watching episodes of 24, afterall), but when I'd return my attention, I was still actually more 'cycling', instead of 'pistoning'.
So while my speed and HR may not reflect it, I think thats a very positive step - so it may be that the primary benefit of this workout isn't the aerobic benefits, but one more of cycling efficiency, which will pay dividends down the road.
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