Week in Review

The past week of running turned out to be a more typical week for me. Only one day did I actually run the miles I had planned at the time I had planned. I'm fine with this though. I'm totally flexible with my training plans as long as I finish the week with 1. The same total number of runs I had planned 2. Nearly the same mileage I had planned.

This week turned out to be just that:

I broke up the week into several different types of runs to make it more interesting:

- Tuesday was an slow paced early morning run - started at around 4am.
- Wednesday was a fast paced afternoon run - almost beat my 10 mile PR.
- Thursday was hill repeats
- Saturday was trail running
- Sunday was late afternoon training in the sun and heat (finally!)




Overall, my training for the month is going nearly as planned. My original, lofty goal of 286 miles has only dropped to a projected 279 miles. I have also been able to maintain 60+ mile weeks for several weeks now. Below is a picture of my weekly mileage since the completion of my first 50 mile race. I hope this is an indicator of good things to come in my June 5 race.

For the upcoming week, I have 57 miles planned. It is going to be really warm this week. I'm going to take advantage of that by running most, if not all of my runs in the late afternoon to further acclimate myself to running in the heat. I'm expecting my race to be warm and humid, so this should be good prep for that.

Finally, my monthly running log is currently as follows. I can't believe there's only one week left of May. Time flies!

Monthly Training Plan - May 2010

Last month I had a really consistent month of running and working out.

A couple notables about April 2010 training:

1. New single month mileage high: 234 miles
2. Sixth straight month of 200+ miles per month
3. Started a new ab/core/lower back routine. 2 days on, 1 day off. Great workout.
4. Switched to strength training for lifting. Will do this for the next 12 - 15 weeks.
5. Started maintaining my nutrition log beginning the last week of April

Plans for May include:

1. Continue strength training workouts trying to increase strength
2. Started Insanity workout routine
3. Maintain high mileage month to prep for second 50 mile race on June 5

Running Plan:

April Training Plans

I've come up with my running schedule for the remaining of April. I really need to get back into the high miles if I'm going to be able to have time to taper for my possible participation in The North Face Endurance Challenge in Washington, D.C. on June 5.

I'm also going to begin posting my other workout schedules starting next week. This will include: lifting, other cardio, and core workouts. If I have time, I'll try to include diet/nutrition plans too.

I have to travel to Atlanta on 25-27 for work, so hopefully that won't affect my Sunday run on the 25th. Other than that, I'm fairly confident in the schedule below:

9 Days and Counting..

I'm actually getting a bit nervous about my upcoming race (Labor of Love 50 Mile). Not so much that it's my first 50 miler, but more-so that I've been doing the majority of my training throughout the winter in Ohio and have only had 2 descent mileage runs this Spring in temps above 50 degrees.

Looking at the forecast for the race:

it's going to be warm (at least from a northerner's perspective). I've read a lot about how heat affects your performance, and definitely have experience in running in the hot, humid summer temps that you can find in central Ohio, but, still nervous.

As far as training goes, I've been fairly on-track with my training schedule the past 2 weeks. I did fall way short of my total mileage goal for March, but was able to still set a new Personal Best for a single month with 213 miles. What does this mean? A new mileage mark to surpass in April!

In other news, last week I received my two new pairs of Brooks running shoes. The yellow/red are Brooks Green Silence and the other are Brooks Ghost 2. I will be wearing the Brooks Ghost 2 April 10. So far, I really like both pair. This is my second pair of Ghost 2. They are fairly light-weight and have good support for long distance road-running. The Green Silence are so lightweight. I believe they are 6+ ounces. I ran a 22 mile run this past Saturday in them and they felt great. I'm hoping to be able to eventually transition to minimal shoes such as this for all distances I run.

9 more days.. it's hard to believe!!

And the tapering begins, or did it already?

The tapering actually began last week unexpectedly. Sometimes things really don't go as planned and it's best to listen to your body and modify your schedule, rather than adhere to the schedule and tear your body down. It's important for me to remember that what I'm doing is meant to be fun and to reach my goal. I'm not a professional athlete by any means, and there's no reward for tearing my body down when it's telling me it's time to rest. So, this past weekend, instead of completing my planned 40 mile run, I opted for a 15.5 mile run and a rest day. Although completing a 40 mile run would have given me a huge confidence boost leading up to my next race, the rest was really what I needed. So, last week I ended up with 33 miles instead of the planned 60. Thus, the beginning of my tapering started before I had planned.

This week I have 52 miles planned. My every-changing schedule for the remaining of March and through April 10 is as follows:

Spring is around the corner!

Today was such a great day for a long run! I started out around 8:30AM and I think the temp was somewhere between 17-20 at the time. Luckily, the sun was out and that really helped warm up things quickly, relatively speaking.

I was attempting my first 35 mile run today so I knew I was going to be out several hours. My plan was to finish within 6 hours at a 10:xx pace. All seemed to be going well in the first mile. I was taking it slow to conserve energy and everything seemed good. I have run this route many times, so I knew approximately where mile markers were. When my Garmin didn't vibrate at mile 1, I checked my watch. It was stuck at 0.92 miles, but luckily the timer kept going. I didn't want to mess around with the watch much, so I just continued on.

March Training Plans

March will be a challenging month for me.

As I prepare for my first 50 mile race, I need to put in some long weekend runs to help build endurance and prepare myself mentally for the challenges running 50 miles. Then toward the end of the month, I need to begin to taper.

Goal
Total Miles: 242

Distances for Long Runs: 
35 Miles
40 Miles

Distances for Back-to-Back Long Runs: 
30,15 Miles (Sat., Sun.)
20,10 Miles (Sat., Sun.)

February Training Wrap-up

I'm pretty happy with the results of my February training.

Running: I exceeded my goal of 200 miles in February and included 2 weekends of long runs and 2 weekends of long back-to-back runs.

Fitness: Was not as consistent as I would have like to have been. Will need to improve on this in March.

Long Runs:
02/07/2010: 27 Miles
02/21/2010: 28 Miles

Back-to-Back Long Runs:
02/13/2010, 02/14/2010: 20,15 Miles
02/27/2010, 02/28/2010: 25,15 Miles


Summary of Running:

Summary of Fitness Workouts:

Goals are good, but...

...sometimes you may fall short of your goals.

With every run, I set a goal in terms of total mileage. Most of the time I accomplish the mileage because I have run the total miles many times in the past. But, as my training moves forward, so does my total mileage for a single training run.

My goal for Sunday's was a goal of 30-35 miles. This would surpass my longest training run to date by 3-8 miles. I did not want to do any special preparation. I wanted it to be just another training run. Unfortunately, I fell well short of my goal. I ended up surpassing my previous single training run longest distance by only 1 mile.I ended up with 28 miles on this run.

What do I do when I fall short of a goal? I think about what I could have done differently that would have helped me meet my goal so I can meet my goal in the future. In this case, I thought of several things I could have done differently, without doing any specific preparation for this particular run. By this, I mean there are things I can do overall in terms of diet and rest on an everyday basis and also learn from my approach to a specific distance that I'm attempting for the first time.

In terms of overall diet, I read a very interesting article on your body's natural production of Human Growth Hormone (hGH) and how it impacts your recovery.

In summary, here are the main things you can do to improve hGH production:

• glutamine supplements
• no fat before workouts
• no carbs before bed
• short bursts of high intensity exercise in a fasted state

In terms of my approach to new distances, I am working on my run/walk approach. Here is a great reference for run/walk training and how it affects your overall pace: Walking Breaks

21 Miles run around this loop (boring!):

Post Run (ready for more!):

Personnal Bests

I don't emphasize obtaining personal bests (PB) or personal records (PR) as part of my normal training. For example, I don't plan that on a certain date, on a certain run, I am going to attempt a PB. My emphasis is on completing my miles I have planned for the week.

The way a PB happens as part of my training is like this. I go out and begin my planned run. On a rare occasion, within my first mile, I feel I have great energy and a great pace. As I run that first mile I make a mental decision as to whether I can maintain a strong pace and give 100% on for the entire planned mileage. At that point I commit myself to making this run an attempt at a PB. Below are some random PB (mostly training runs)

Official Runs/distance

Distance	Time	Pace	Date
26.2 Miles	4:01:15	9:11	10/18/2009

Unofficial Runs - used Garmin for time/distance

Distance	Time	Pace	Date
4 Miles	0:28:38	7:09	10/14/2009
7 Miles	0:52:48	7:31	12/22/2009
10 Miles	1:16:32	7:35	02/18/2010
26.2 Miles	3:50:14	8:47	11/28/2009
31 Miles	5:06:07	9:54	12/12/2009

Running Plans for Week of 02/15/2010

I have a very unsophisticated planning mechanism for my running schedule. I basically plan out my month based on an upcoming race or goal. In this case, it happens to be my goal of completing a 50M race in April 2010.

So, what I do each week or 2 is write out the miles I want to run each day for the remainder of the month. I always have a "total monthly miles" goal in mind. For example, for Feb. I had a goal of 200+ miles and by Feb. 10 I had a total of 49 miles for the month. I knew I wanted to concentrate on back-to-back long runs, so that is the basis of my schedule. Current schedule totals 218 miles for Feb. You can see how some days don't go as planned, so the miles are adjusted accordingly.

Here was my plan from 02/10/2010 thru 02/16/2010:

Here is my updated plan based on my missed run yesterday:

Like I said.. very unsophisticated!

A Snowy Run

My first run of the week was not what I was hoping for. The winter in Columbus, OH has been pretty brutal this year in terms of cold and snowfall. But, I'm just happy to be running outdoors!

Some good things about this run:
1. It's always makes things interesting to run in different weather conditions. I may not be able to reach my goal pace, but I will get my mileage in, and that's what counts most to me.
2. I got to wear my new Brooks ID singlet, although it was on top of my long sleeve layers.

3. I feel like I got a really good quad workout as part of this run. Trying to maintain your footing with the slipping of the snow beneath your feet makes for a good workout!

Just so you know, I absolutely refuse to run on a treadmill: 1) I hate going to gyms 2) I don't have one at home 3) I only run outdoors.