Skip to main content

Training week # 2 Mileage is pileing up


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 overestimated the distance. I recalculated it based on a close guesstimation from map my run and some other peoples distances and I concluded my route is 4.1 km so 0.5 km shorter than previously thought. The repercussions are that my last week's distance of 51 km was wrong and I only ran 47. So this week I jumped from 47 (29 miles) t0 56 km (34 miles). A five mile jump in a week at these lower distances is significant and that has added to my tiredness. That also added time to my average pace. My running partner and his wife have been running with the youth so I started to join them on Saturday mornings along with Vye and the kids. We "jogged the bog" this Saturday which is a small 2.8 km loop around a swamp. It was a nice little jog with some walking and faster pace running. Overall it made for a slow run taking over 18 minutes to run the 2.8 km loop. This takes my average pace down quite a bit for the week. If you throw those times out though my average pace really improved this week by 12 seconds per Km and 30 seconds per mile. Here are some points about this week.

Week 2 Review

Stats

  • Total Distance = 56.1 Km (35 miles)
  • Total Time = 5:23:39 (47 minutes longer than last week)
  • Avg pace in mins per Km = 5:41 (5:53 last week)
  • Avg pace in mins per Mile = 8:59 (9:28 last week)
  • Total Calorie burn = 3728 (3110 last week and 3500 = 1 lb of fat)

Highlights

  • Obtaining my goal distance of 56 km.
  • I ran with Vye and the kids twice this week.
  • I got a runner's high last night for the first time in months.
  • Improved my pace.
  • I could feel my body settling into the running routine and each run felt like it was not as difficult as last weeks.
  • My cough is just about gone.

Challenges

  • I didn't wear my nylon base layer one day and obtained toe blisters and have had them since.
  • I got insomnia on Friday night and my times slowed this weekend indicating I am over trained.
  • I didn't run in the morning once this week.
  • THE HEAT! (It was fun though and a welcome challenge).
  • A tight or torn hamstring/glute that has hindered me since Feb, I really need to see a masseuse/physiotherapist.

Well I am happy with my training it is fun to start to finally get some data and I can start to watch my times improve and can compare various aspects of my 65 column spreadsheet. I feel I am walking that knife's edge between over trained and the safe maximum amount. Next week will really let me know if I am over trained or not. If my run times for the same distance increase and it is much harder to obtain the same distance and times, or my sleep is too disrupted I may need to back of for a few days and take a lower mileage rest week. I hope it doesn't come to that I have 61 glorious km to run next week.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"The Van Aaken Method" vs. "The Lydiard Method"

I just finished reading a book by Ernst van Aaken Called "Van Aaken Method". I am a huge proponent of long slow distance and started working towards the "Lydiard Method" way of training earlier this Spring. Van Aaken was experimenting with long slow distance before Lydiard, as early as the 40's. Though both methods are quite similar there are some slight differences. I experimented with both over the last bit and have merged the methods into a plan that works well for me, with my plan resembling Lydiard's method the closest. These endurance centered methods are the extreme opposite of the tempo or interval training methods that experienced popularity in the middle of the last Century, the premise of which is to run many anaerobic intervals (using more oxygen than you can breath causing lactic acid to form) without full recovery between intervals. What is Long Slow Distance? In a nutshell the theory involves running every day and running as much mileage...
4 comments
Read more

Running Syncope (Losing consciousness after running)

I went for my Saturday morning run today just like any other weekend run in the past. I had planned on running with a small group of people in the morning but thought I had missed them when I noticed their cars were at our meeting spot but no one was around, so I ran on by myself and thought I would see them along the run. I felt pretty good this morning and had a really fast pace. I haven't been sick this week but I could tell I was just a bit off the last 3-4 days. I blamed it on stress from writing my PhD proposal but now I am wondering. I saw someone running quickly about a full Km ahead of me (it is a very straight and flat course). I thought I could catch them in the next 10 minutes so I pushed pretty hard. I met my goal on caught the runner about the time I veered off to run a different side trail. I hit my turn around point and decided to cruise back to my car. I was only running 6 km in the morning and was planning on a steep and technical 20 Km run in the evenin...
5 comments
Read more

A nice run with a negative split!

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...
2 comments
Read more