Been a while, but not a lot of activity until the past few days.
Last Monday and Tuesday I was travelling for work, and still extremely sore from the legs workout on Saturday. I packed my running stuff with me just in case, but throughout the day on Monday I knew there was just no way it was going to happen. So those ended up being recovery days.
Wednesday I went to yoga and had one of my worst workouts. I ate a light lunch, but before I headed out the door, I had some chocolate milk with protein powder. It had been a long time since my stomach gave me issues that I thought I'd be able to handle it, but partway through the standing series, I just found I had no energy, and my stomach wasn't feeling all that great. My legs were still heavily fatigued, even though they were much less sore. So the combination compounded such that I had to sit on the 2nd set of a couple poses. It felt like all blood was going to keeping me upright that there was nothing left for digestion, so what was in my stomach just sat there. And in those situations, taking in more water just makes things worse - so it was a perfect storm of a bad situation.
On Thursday I went for a 10ish mile run. For some dumb reason, it doesn't show up on my Garmin at all, and it's not in my logs (I've been slacking on updating immediately after a workout). I must have deleted it unknowingly or something - very strange. But the point is that it was 10 easy miles done at easy pace (around 8:40-8:45), and felt good throughout. It was nice to get a decent distance in and start feeling like my old self. I was a little surprised to feel some soreness afterwards - not used to feeling sore after 10 miles, but it has been a while since I've been able to run any distance, so it makes sense. Had a brief scare the following morning when I was turning over in bed and felt a stab of pain on the outside of my right foot - but it didn't seem to materialize into much of anything, and I wasn't planning on running on it soon anyway. I figured that 10 miler would be the last long run until the Patriot half the following weekend - so that'd give me about 7-8 days to heal up, minus one or two shorter runs I might do in the meantime.
On Friday I did the TrainerRoad Kearsarge workout. I had been doing threshold workouts for the prior few weeks, so I thought I'd change it up and do an interval one, and this looked interesting.
The following day, about 12 hours later, I attempted the Brewer workout. I figured this didn't look too bad - it's intensity factor was only rated at 0.84 while many of the other workouts I've done have been over 0.9, and most of it is right around FTP. I also figured it looked like a good hill simulation as it gradually build up power. I have to admit - I totally underestimated this one because it was a ball buster! I could tell after the first interval that it was going to be tough, and after two, I could tell my legs were cooked and there was no way I'd be able to do all six. Given that I couldn't keep up with the power numbers (and I've read that if you can't keep within certain percentages of intervals, you are not ready and should just stop and rest up), and that I also wanted to make sure I got another session of lunges and squats in - I decided to can the workout after about an hour.
On Sunday I did another long swim in the lake. I could tell a huge difference in effort this time compared to last time - although I felt good the last time, on this day I really felt like I was swimming smoothly and with less resistance. Last time I was kicking more than is necessary for having a wetsuit (something I realized last year, but forgot about), and I started out too fast. On this swim, I started out slower, and as a result my breathing never got rushed. And when it comes to swimming, where form is king and you have to be regimented about breathing - trying to avoid having rushed breathing is a huge, huge factor is staying relaxed. I'm a little skeptical about the distance, though - first off, a friend who joined in the swim recorded almost 1/4 mile longer distance and second, the track makes it look like I did a bunch of dog legs and 90 degree turns. At this point, I swim fairly darned straight, so the GPS tracking is still apparently a little glitchy. As well as having it under the swim cap may be - with my head down in the water, it's probably prone to error and erratic readings, I figure.
This evening I did a brick session - giving Brewer another go, followed by a 6 mile run. The trainer session still kicked my ass - I still couldn't maintain the higher power numbers, so I ended up settling for trying to stay around 300W for as long as I could once the target got to that range. It would still be a much longer extended interval at that power (about 123% FTP) than I've done before, and it was getting the HR near 170. Also, the description of the workout indicates that those sprint sections are to be out of the saddle, which I don't do on the trainer. So if I could get my weight working for me, that probably would have helped.
The run felt really good - one of the best brick runs I've done. I've noticed that brick runs after the trainer just aren't the same as brick runs coming off a real road bike ride for whatever reason - trainer brick runs are easier. The entire 6 miles felt good, steady and strong. This was encouraging, as I was trying to make sure I stayed well hydrated and fueled during the bike portion. On most bike sessions, I've often not bothered with fueling during the workout because it is only 90 minutes in length - but in this case I wanted to see how my legs felt on a run after a pretty intense leg workout on the bike.
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