Monday July 25th
Did an easy swim in the morning. I listened to an interview with Geoff Roes (2010 winner of the Western States 100) and he talked about how he doesn't really cross train for running anymore. He talked about how is body has become in tune with running and that any cross training would probably derail his running. I'm starting to believe in this a little. It seems that whenever I do swim, the next morning I'm achy when I shouldn't be. I'll be able to further test this with tomorrow's run and next weeks Tuesday run since I won't be doing any swimming.
Tuesday July 26th
Am: 7 miles
Headed to the track for a little faster running this morning. Did an easy one mile warm-up and some light stretching. What started out in my mind as 4x1600 turned into a straight 4 mile hard effort. I kept the run at what I would consider my 15k race pace. Averaged 6:20's for the duration. It felt good to throw down a more intense pace, but in the end I can say that I like LSD runs even more.
PM: 3 miles
Easy 3 after work on the trails at Maxwell. Felt Really good considering the morning run.
Wednesday July 27th
5 miles
Nothing exciting to post about this run. Uneventful 5 miles through town. The legs are starting to feel the miles that I've been accumulating. Luckily, if I get through this weekend, next week is a recovery week.
Thursday July 28th
7.6 miles
A rather sluggish 7 miler this morning. I think my body is still revolting last Saturday's long run when I couldn't take in proper hydration/nutrition. Today I'll start hammering out the water and nutrition to hopefully get myself back up to par by Saturday. I'm guessing once I get my body re-saturated with glycogen and water I'll be feeling like a million bucks again. Here's to throwing out my calorie counting for the next two days so that I can try and recover as quickly as possible.
Friday July 29th
No running as usual. Legs are still feeling a bit on the weak side, but about 85% improvement from the day before. I found a lot of knots in my calves when rolling on the Trigger Point Quadballer this morning. Got on the thing 3 times and hopefully worked out enough kinks that tomorrow's run will go over smoothly. David Seng (one of the Pups from the Tri-Shark Pups program)is going to join me for the latter portion of my 20 miler on Saturday. It will be interesting to see how he handles running on the Clinton Lake Trails.
Saturday July 30th
18-20 miles (3:40:00)
Definitely a good run considering that I've felt kind of sloppy the past few days. Woke up at 4am and downed my oatmeal and coffee. Got out of the house and to the trail. The focus on today's run was to do the entire run with nothing but electrolytes and water. The first 10 miles was probably the hardest. I'm used to taking a gel at the 5 mile mark of this course. I finished out the first loop in under 1:30:00 and went to the car. I refilled my camelbak and met up with David. We hit the trail with gusto. He did extremely well for his first run out at Clinton Lake. We cruised through the first five miles with no problem. Once we hit the 2nd half I could tell that the nearly constant hills were starting to take their toll on him. Before we set off I gave him one of my handhelds to use. After about 6 miles he had it sucked dry. I topped him off with some of the water from my camelbak. We got about another mile into the run and we had both sucked our water dry. Needless to say the last few miles were a bit of a struggle due to a lack of hydration. I stopped to pee once during that 2nd half and could tell I was inching towards dehydration. But before we knew it, we breached the trail and onto the road.
I learned that on runs of under 4 hours, I can perform quite alright on no nutrition as long as I keep my electrolytes in place. Next long run though I will make sure and pack extra water for the person running with me.
Sunday July 31st
10 miles (1:35:00)
Nice and easy 10 miler at Clinton Lake. Felt really good throughout the run. I was going to do the full loop but ran into so many spiderwebs I turned it into an out-and-back.
This week was kind of rough. A mixture of working 8 straight days, the heat during the majority of my runs, and the increased mileage definitely took their toll. Looking forward to a relaxed week of reduced mileage next week.
