Geo-Runner

I just passed my month mark (20 th ) of seriously training. In the past I have yo- yo'd in mileage from almost no running to about 50 miles. This last month was the first time I have ever tried hitting weekly distance/time goals. I am using a training program that running coach phenom Aurthur Lydiard came up with through experimenting on himself, and used the techniques on his athletes. The gist of it is to obtain as high an aerobic threshold as possible through maximum mileage bombardment week after week. His suggestion is 100 miles a week. He calls this phase "conditioning". The goal is simply to: grow new capillaries, strengthen the heart, improve running form and efficiency, burn fat efficiently, and improve pulmonary O2 uptake. By running this kind of weekly distance your speed and times slowly increase as your body slowly makes the changes necessary to maintain the distance. As you run as hard as your aerobic ability allows you to each week you improve and you r...

This last week was a great week for running. I cranked out some great mileage and started running on Mount Doug again. Mount Doug is an amazing chunk of rock to run on. It has over 15 miles of single track trails. The trails are varied from soft, wide, and flat to rocky, rooty and steep. I think I can do just about any work out I'd wish on the mountain, from speed work and intervals to hills and long distance. Since I have moved to UVic it is a bit further away. It takes 2.5 miles or about 4 km of running just to get to the trails. Once I run to the mountain from my house, I have been running a very simple trail that circum-navigates the base of the mountain for now. It is a simple route with little elevation and steepness but it is just right while I am building my base. In a couple of weeks I will start incorporating the full 11 km Mount Doug gutbuster route (almost 20Km total distance round trip from my house) once a week and then twice etc. It is a nice way to snag 20 Km on, an...

Since today is a holiday (BC day) I slept in a bit had a good breakfast and hit the trails at 10:00 am. I was just going to run a slow 8.2 Km or two laps around the university. I felt really heavy at first and my speed felt much slower than the effort I was putting into it. It was considerably cooler today than the past two weeks but I was still feeling a bit slow. I decided to crank up my effort from my average 5 (on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being race day effort), to about 8 or 80% of race day effort. So I really began to crank. I finished my first lap and hit my split button on my watch and kept going. I was pretty tired but was still giving a good effort. I checked my split time and realized I had finished lap one less than 22 minutes which is a first since starting my intense training schedule. I decided not to stop at lap one but to keep my effort up around 8. I saw quite a few people on the run so I began to use them as an excuse to really crank, you know, so I could...

Another 7 days have gone by and I have now completed week two of my 58 week training schedule. I am feeling it. The miles this week piled up like a derailed freight train. I have ran 12 of the last 14 days. So I have only had two days to rest. The reality of adding another 100 km to what I ran this week is starting to set in. This is not going to be easy. Last nights run was my first run that my times actually didn't improve. This indicates that I am completely knackered. On Friday night I had insomnia until 4:00 AM another classic sign of over training. I am going to stay consistent and slow my runs down a hair rather than try to improve my times every day. It may be the speed not the duration that is burning me out. I am really happy that I have stuck to my training schedule for two weeks now. I have met my goals. I did have to change up my distance for each loop I have been running. Last week I was calling one loop 4.6 km and after thinking about it I realized I had overestimate...