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.
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