Monday 7/18/11
2500 Yard Swim
Early morning swim at Fairview park. Maintained a 60% effort for 2,000 yards and cooled down the next 500. Overall I felt pretty good during this swim considering it had been a week since I had been in the pool. Relaxed the rest of the morning before heading into work.
Tuesday 7/19/11
AM: 9 miles (1:11:00)
Drove over to Weldon Springs for an easy 9 miles. I have decided to use the Garmin mainly for distance and just run off of feel. The first two miles were hilly singletrack with some stairs and plenty of shade amongst the trees. After that two miles I headed out onto the cross country ski trails. At this point the heat index was well into the 90's. I maintained a solid effort throughout mile 5. At this point I had sucked through my Amphipod handheld and took a trip down to the restaurant to refill. After a quick pitstop it was hard to get the pace back up. Once I got through mile 6 things started to click again. I finished the run with a sub 8 min average (7:30-7:40's for the last 7 miles). Did some stretching and drank a lot of fluids before heading back to Normal.
PM: 3 miles (0:28:00)
Got off of work and headed out to Maxwell park for an easy 3 mile shakeout. Everything felt good. Still ridiculously hot. Soaked through my clothes even though I was out for less than 30 minutes. Came home, ate dinner, stretched, and rolled on the foam roller
Wednesday 7/20/11
5 miles (0:43:00)
Easy effort today since yesterday was the first double of the training season. Shins were bugging me a little if I relaxed on my cadence. Ate plenty of food today since I had the appetite of a horse. Did plenty of rolling, iced the shins, did some reading, and some core work. Today I also Emailed another ultra marathon runner to get some tips and pointers from. I got some good advice from Nick Clark (3rd at WS100 and 3rd at the Hardrock 100 this year)and figured I'd email someone else and really bank on other peoples experience.
Thursday 7/21/11
10 miles (1:30:00)
Went out to the Clinton Lake Ultra course and ran 10 miles. Lots of steep inclines and declines. Even though this trail is about 35 miles away, It's the best course in the area for hill work. Blasted all the uphills and ran a decent clip on the flats. Felt very good considering the mileage this week is a bit higher than usual. Temps were in the 90's again. I went through 32oz of liquid during the run; 16 oz of water, 16oz of Powerbar perform. Did some light stretching, drove home, ate and went to work.
Friday 7/22/11
Rest Day
Did some light rolling and hammered the nutrition today to gear up for the Saturday Long Run. Feeling a little tightness in my left heel but it doesn't seem to be related to the Achilles tendon. Tomorrows 4+ hour long run will for sure give it a test.
Saturday 7/23/11
Woke up at 4am and got breakfast and coffee started. Looking forward to hitting the trail early. Hopefully the temperatures stay at bay until later this afternoon. Taking plenty of water and nutrition. Running at Weldon Springs so that my aid station (Honda Civic) will never be too far away.
6:40am
24 miles (3:57:23)
The run started out nicely. Easy rolling hills through the farm trails at Weldon springs. It was nice to watch the sunrise. After the first 4-5 miles my stomach started hating that Ironman Perform drink. I quit drinking it and suffered through the next few miles. Once I got my stomach figured out I switched to powerbar gels and straight water. After 2.5 hours went by the temperatures were hitting the 90's with the heat index peaking at 105 degrees. When 3 hours hit I was really feeling the heat. The 2 mile section of trail that I was on had no reprieve from the ever punishing sun. I slogged through the next hour and was relieved to hit the car. I bought 4 large waters from the Boondocks restaurant. Drank three of those, 16 ounces of coconut water, and ate a waffle and almond butter. Overall I consider the run a success. Only took in 440 calories over the course of the run, which was partly b/c of the unrelenting heat. Looking forward to a chilled afternoon with a little light massage and a lot of reading. Another long-ish run on the schedule tomorrow. We'll see how the legs feel.
Sunday 7/24/11
9.5 miles (1:30:00)
Got up and after a late start drove out to the trails. Upon arriving, the sky opened up and released hell fire and brimstone. Considering that I didn't want to run in the trees during a lightning storm, I resorted to driving back home to wait it out. After about 20 or so minutes of contemplation, I laced up my shoes and headed out the front door. The first mile was exactly what I expected. Just a little tight from the long run yesterday. After the I passed the 10 minute mark, everything felt good. Took it nice and easy, not wanting to kill the pace b/c this week has been a test of the new outlook on training brought on by an email from Nick Clark. He suggested running for a minimum of 90 minutes the day after my weekend long run, adding double runs, and making sure that each run is quality.
Outside of running (kind of) I just finished reading the book "The Lure of Long Distances." It chronicles the author and his training and racing that lead up to his attempt at running the Spartathlon. The Spartathlon is an Ultramarathon that starts in Athens and ends in Sparta, covering over 150 miles. It was a pretty good read and interesting to see how he balanced training and family. It also included some good accounts of how his legs felt during the training and racing. I have recently started reading Ulrich's book, "Running on Empty." I'm not quite halfway through the book yet but it's an amazing read. I'll update more about that when I get through more of it.
