Cursed Realm of the Faceless Ghost

I think my Monday workouts are starting to feel like the hardest of the week. Today the schedule called for two miles at about 5:50 followed by another seven at about 6:20 with no rest in between. And about a quarter mile into my (short) warmup I could fell that my legs were still sore from Saturday and I thought there was no way I was going to finish the workout. But I took it five minutes at a time, and as my legs loosened up I kept feeling better and I managed to finish. 

On Saturday my foot started to hurt at about 16 miles in exactly the same spot I hurt it on my last long run. (And I hurt it at about 16 miles in my last long run, too.) I wasn't as worried about it because I knew it cleared up last time, and it's already feeling much better. But it is interesting that this keeps happening on long runs, and I'll need to figure out what's going on pretty soon.  

Easy miles on the treadmill. (I'm not tough enough to run in the rain if I don't have to.)

Like I said, my workouts are getting harder. Sometimes I wonder if I can finish them. But I guess it's a good sign if I worry about failing but pull it off anyway. 

The sets today were 0.25 mile at 5:00, 0.5 at 5:36, and 1.5 at 6:00 (no rests in between). I did two sets, walking for 4:00 in between. It sucked, even though it was short.   

Bad news. I was supposed to run 10 miles this morning and I didn't. 

My right foot started to hurt a little last evening for no apparent reason. It sill hurt in the morning, but I didn't think much of it. But a few miles into my run it was apparent that things were getting worse rather than better. So I turned around and limped back home. I'll cross train tomorrow, and I hope to be back up to speed on Saturday. If not, I'll rest a couple more days and see what happens.

I hate missing workouts. But an old coach used to always remind me that there's no single workout that will make or break your training. It's the day in, day out consistency that matters. In that context, this is nothing but a hiccup.

Like I said yesterday, my foot hurt when I tried to run, so I had to cut things short. Tonight I skipped the run altogether and cross trained on the stair stepper instead. It was only supposed to be a short run anyway, so it wasn't too bad--25 minutes watching an old episode of Miami Vice on the treadmill. My foot feels better because of the rest, but it still hurts, so I don't know what to do about tomorrow. I think I'll roll the dice and try to run. If it hurts I'll develop a new plan of attack.

I haven't mentioned this here, but when my foot hurts I usually stop wearing my flip flops and Sanuks to school and wear an old set of New Balance shoes instead, because they're the only shoes I have with anything close to meaningful arch support. That does seem to help. I wonder if I should get a set of running shoes with a little more support for my injury days. I think I may look into that at Runner's Corner. 

I was supposed to run 11 miles at goal pace this morning, but I didn't want to. So I decided to deviate from the plan and go run a trail. Believe it or not, I think that was my first trail run of the year. Weird. 

It went about as well as you would expect, which is to say, not good. I guess I shouldn't be surprised to feel like I have no climbing legs when I haven't climbed anything in months. But I was surprised at how lousy I felt in general. Still, it was nice to be outside and in the mountains. 

My legs were sore yesterday from Saturday's run, and they were even more sore when I woke up today. That's never encouraging before a speed workout. Surprisingly, I made it through all of today's workout without cutting any corners, although I was about ready to tap out on the last set. That means the intensity was about right. 

Forty-nine minutes alternating between five minutes at 6:33 and two minutes at 5:33. Not as bad as it sounds at the beginning, worse at the end. I guess that makes it a good workout.  

Easy miles at the gym. I made a barley vegetable soup for dinner last night. It was pretty high in fiber, so I wasn't a very good treadmill citizen this morning. 

I was worried about tonight's workout. Thirty minutes alternating between 30 seconds at 5:21 and 30 seconds at 6:22. I figured I would be done by 10 minutes, but it turned out to be easier than I thought. Which is not to say it was easy. After 20 minutes I put the treadmill on a 1.5 percent decline. That was to make it easier for me to finish, but I justified it by saying that I need to train on downhills to get ready for Ogden. 

I was supposed to go 10 this morning, but I had to cut it to 9 in the interest of time. I blame the rain. I hate running cold and wet even more than I hate steady miles indoors, so I had to go the gym. Unfortunately, the travel time ate up what would have been available for that last mile. If the sun is out, maybe I'll go add a mile or two with Catherine and Elliott this evening. 

Rest day.

As far as running is concerned, things haven't been going as smoothly over the last week or so. The obvious reason would be that my workouts are getting harder. But more than that I think it's the inherent impracticality of trying to prepare for Ogden while in school. It doesn't really work to deal with the highest volume and intensity of training at the same time you're trying to prepare for finals. The first thing to go is sleep, and when you stop sleeping enough it spills over into the rest of your life pretty quickly. But hey, it's only a couple of weeks, right? 

Anyways, despite having a rest day yesterday, my legs felt tired from the start on today's run. Usually they don't start getting heavy and stiff until well into the last half of the run, but today they were there before mile 7. Maybe way before. I can't really remember. Regardless, I could tell it was not one of my best runs ever.

I had already decided to blow off the marathon-pace finish that my schedule called for, and the sore legs only reinforced that. But as I ran through Nunn's Park, two runners blew by me in the low-6:00s and invited me to jump in. It turned out to be Sasha and Chad Robinson, and as I started running with them I was surprised at how comfortable the faster pace felt, even though I was having a bad day.

(Believe it or not, even though I've been on the blog for more than three years and run on the River Trail many, many times, this was the first time I've met Sasha.)

Anyway, I stuck with Sasha and Chad for about 3.5 miles (I think) before they turned off and headed into Orem. When they left, my motivation to run fast went with them and I settled back into my low 7:00s for the last few miles home.

All in all, it was a decent workout. And it brings me to 50 miles for the week for the first time of the year. (That used to be no big deal at all, but times change.) I'm glad I ran into Sasha and Chad, and the faster miles were good for me. But it also made it painfully clear that at those paces, my legs are the limiter, not my cardiovascular system. I could chat and carry on with no problem. But my legs were stiff and sore and altogether unpleasant to be around. I'm not sure quite how to fix that, other than to run lots and lots of miles for lots and lots of years, which may or may not be practical at this stage in the game.

Fortunately for me, I don't care nearly as much as I used to. I'm just happy to be reasonably fit and on track to run Ogden injury free. Give me the chance to taper for a week or so before the race, and I'm sure my legs will hold up for 26.2 miles.

PS: we've recently gone public with this, so I may as well say it here. Catherine and I are having another baby in October. 

I had a pretty hard workout scheduled for today, but I ended up pulling a pair of almost all-nighters to finish a project for a class. No running today. 

Six easy miles. Not much to say about it. 

I cut is short again. I could blame it on sleep deprivation, school stress, or whatever else, but really when it came down to it I was bored and unmotivated and decided to stop rather than running two more miles on a treadmill. I think that's fair. I also think it's starting to look like a patter, so I need to get my game together. 

Really just not a great week for me. I was supposed to run 9, but I felt like garbage so I stopped early. I was going to finish my miles in the evening, there was just no time, what with finals prep and all. This week can't end soon enough. 

You know it's a bad week when even three miles feel like a chore. 

I had to take two finals today so we could get out of town, and I ended up skipping my run altogether to do it. So really, I just gave up on this week. 

So, last week turned out to be far worse than I expected it to be. Even my easy three mile run on Friday felt forced, and I ended up not having time to run on Saturday, as I had to take two finals and then skip out of town. 

But now we're in LA for a week, so I'll be able to get back on track now. This morning I was supposed to run a 10K or a time trial. but I don't know where you find a 10K on a Monday, and a time trial didn't sound fun at all, so I decided to run a trail instead.

I went over to Deukmejian Park near my parents' home and started up the Mt. Leukins route. It's about a 12 mile round trip, but I just ran uphill for 40 minutes (about 3.5 miles, I think) before turning around and running back down.

I didn't feel great. It turns out that mid-80s temperatures feel VERY hot when you're not used to them, and I felt like I was melting the whole time I was out. Fortunately, it should be a bit cooler at Ogden.  

Nothing more than easy miles this morning. I went to the Rose Bowl with Catherine and ran two laps while she and Elliott went on their own run. I'll be honest--I felt like garbage. But I'll blame that almost entirely on timing. It was later in the day than I usually run, which means I was underfueled and that it was hotter than I'm used to. Also, my legs were a bit sore from the hills yesterday. 

In the afternoon we took Elliott to the beach in Santa Monica. Among other things, we spent about an hour riding cruiser bikes on the boardwalk. Good times.  

I decided again to blow off the scheduled workout and run a trail instead. Actually, it was a more of a fire road, but whatever. I drove across the small valley and ran up the Whiting Woods Motorway to the antennas up on top. It was a nice run, and I felt pretty good, except for the stupid unleashed dog that nipped at my ankles for a quarter mile or so. Also, it was super foggy, so visibility at the top was limited to a couple of hundred feet, which was cool in its own way but not as cool as the view on a clear day. 

Six easy miles this morning. There are very few flat places to run around here, but rather than going all the way back to the Rose Bowl I drove down to CV Park and ran laps on the mellow trails through the oaks. The trail around the park is the course my high school uses when the cross country team hosts meets or races or whatever they call them. Running there makes me wish I had run in high school. But maybe I would have burnt out long ago if I had. In any event, I had a good run today. 

So I departed pretty far from the training schedule today. Instead of running 23 miles on teh road with a fast finish, I ran for three hours on the trails above Draper with a friend who is running the Timp Trail Marathon in a few weeks. The beginning and the end were pretty good, and the views were incredible the whole time. But we spent the biggest chunk of time in the middle bushwhacking and searching for the trail and wading across snow fields, which explains why the average speed was a touch under 3 miles per hour. 

As far as marathon training goes, today's run was probably a 3 out of 10. But it ranked much higher on the adventure scale.

I think I'd be interested in running another 50k this year if I can find a good late-summer option.  

Since I went off schedule again last week, and since I think the plan I'm on starts tapering too soon, I've decided to do last week's scheduled workouts this week. That meant either a 10K race or TT today. To be honest, I didn't exactly do either, because, I can't think of any local Monday morning 10Ks, and with my legs as sore as they are I didn't see my self putting in an honest TT effort. Instead, I chose a target pace and held it. The result was a 10K in just over or just under 36 minutes (I'm not exactly sure because I was on a treadmill and I didn't pay attention to how long my half-mile warmup took). That makes today's workout my unaided 10K PR. Of course, I've only run one other unaided 10K, and that was about a month after I started running. According to the FRB Race Time Predictor, that puts me on pace for about a 2:50 at Ogden. 

Easy miles on the River Trail. My legs felt a bit heavy.