Training Log Archive: runninghils

Pack on
Ran at City Forest, legs were not wanting to move today, but I tried to keep a "good" start of race pace anyway.

Mountain biking on City Forest trails, very soft trails - lots of new re-routes. City Forest is a very tight twisty trail with a fair amount of roots.

After the mountain bike. Distance is approximate because GPS watch was consistently measuring shorter than actual distance. Felt majorly limited by my legs today through all sections, but actually the last hour of this run was better than hour 3 of any of my other runs on brick workouts - tired, but not suffering. Probably because it was broken up with the bike.

C • Woo girl! 4

Warm-up, including tire flipping, then 2:00 of plank hold on the tire, 5 push-ups every 0:30 (2:00 clock stops)

Workout:
Row 1000m
Run 800m
Then: Fran
21*15*9
Thrusters (53 lb)
Pull-ups (red band)
Time: 16:02

(forgot to stop my watch after I finished this part)

Skill:
every 0:15, do 2 squat clean thrusters
Slightly lower weight - 43 lb.

Fairview Hill - 6 repeats. I think this ride makes a big difference for me. Pushed it on the hill and pushed bigger gears than usual, shifting between "hard" and "harder" gears 1:00 and 0:30 - each hill about 5 minutes.

Best part is the reward of FLYING down the hill after the interval. Perfect 20 minutes out to the hill for warm up and 13 minutes back to the car for cool-down. Got Paula Abdul "The Way That You Love Me" stuck in my head for the cool down section. Brought in by liking a house on the hill.

10 min warm-up
10x3 min intervals, 2 minute recovery, cool-down
This was convenient time-wise because every interval started on a multiple of 5.
This was a stressful week, but today was the biggest stress day of all - external audit in our area. They didn't even end up coming through my building. Anyway, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night and have been pretty high strung for the past 3 days. Glad it's over and work life is back to normal. Bonus - my office is clean.

It was super humid today with a light mist for much of the run. Felt the humidity a bit in the lungs, but overall pretty decent run. Was expecting to churn out a bit faster average since a greater % of the run was intervals, but considering my stress levels and bad food choices, it's fine.

Warm-up then:
Strength
Every 2 minutes 3 front squats, holding the bottom for 3 seconds.
Man, this was frustrating because Jason called me out on breaking lumbar curve at the bottom and coming up from the squat unevenly by raising my butt a bit first. Grr... I didn't know I had this issue before, but when he held me in the right form, I couldn't stand up with the weight. Well, something to work on.

Workout:
3 rounds for time:
15 burpee box jumps - 24" box
12 slam balls - 20 pound ball
Time: 7:11
This was a pretty good one for me.

Skill:
5x5 hand stand push-ups. I CAN kip them, and I did a few, but again got called for being floppy in the core during the kip, so I should go back to practicing shorter range of motion strict.

All these things together go along with something I learned at physical therapy this spring - I have terrible posture and I can't hold my back straight and shoulders back for long at all. I have been working on it and I THINK that it's getting better, but I guess if I focus on doing things right, leveling my hips when I stand, etc, it will all come together eventually - I'll stand straighter, lift better, and be generally stronger/fitter all around.

Group split in 2 before the ride, and I went with the "steady" group rather than the herky jerky group. Don't quite understand how the race team seems to have so much difficulty holding a steady pace in a paceline.

Anyway, we did the longest route in the roster - the "Canyon Sprint" which has a mini race where the road goes down a hill into a drainage ditch and then back up. It's not much of a hill, but all we've got. People got a little premature on the sprint and burned themselves out. Meanwhile, I hopped on Mike's wheel and let him do the work leading up to the sprint. Once we turned onto the road, I grabbed Joe's wheel as he passed, which brought me right up into the lead group. At the bottom of the hill, they all seemed to be losing steam, so I cut through the middle, sprinted up the hill and WON the sprint! First time ever! It was largely due to strategy, which I did very well today.

Good ride today - I took lots of good pulls, many of which were in the 24mph+ range. Whew! After one particularly crushing pull (pace dictated by my pulling companion in the other line) I looked down and was up to 174 HR. Most of the other pulls, I got up to 164-167. Didn't really feel I could sustain that for much more than the 60-90 seconds I was pulling, but the HR probably would have continued to climb if I'd put in that effort for longer than that.

C • Awesome! 3

Well, this was mentally difficult for me, and I guess I did not rise to the challenge. Got my zones and today was the first day to employ them. I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to hit the desired heartrate today, so I did go into it in the wrong place mentally. I was supposed to do the middle hour at "tempo" pace, which meant 157-168 based on my test. I don't even get that average on the slaughterfest when I have the fear of getting dropped to get me to hang on.

Anyway, first 30 minutes: avg 129. This is below Z2 according to my test, but I went by feel anyway because I thought I was still putting in a decent effort for a warm-up
0:30-1:30 - avg 146 I was trying to go hard, and I thought I was. My legs were burning, I was breathing hard, but the HR just wouldn't go up - I hit 157 on climbs, and the best I could seem to sustain for any time was 153, but this was at the beginning. Often found it dropping down and I would have to push to try to get the HR up again. Seemed like the legs were the limiter here.
1:30-2:00 - avg 124 My legs were definitely feeling the 1 previous hour.

I feel like a failure because I couldn't even get out of zone 2. I have no idea how I was getting a HR of 166 on average for that 20 minute time trial and I couldn't even hit it at all today. Equipment difference?

C • temp? 2

10 min steady state, 3 min intervals
Decided to take the Chippewa today, but I think I should save the Chippewa for the spring. It's getting too low - often the water was so low that my paddle was hitting on every paddle stroke. I also forgot there was a high E. Coli warning on it last week. It is moving faster than the Tittabawassee, though. Note: out to the Pine River split is 3 miles exactly from the Tridge.

it started raining hard during interval 6. I couldn't even see what was going on with the river, so about 10 seconds before the end, I hit a sandy shallow spot and got stuck. Fortunately, a few minutes later, it lightened up and stopped after about 25 minutes. A guy in his mis-70s commended me for paddling upstream today. That was a nice change from the dumb "it's a lot easier the other way" and "you're going the wrong way" comments.