A Passion for Running

Yesterday’s 90 minute run home was a good one. Most of these runs I’ve been getting done in a slow 10+ per minute mile pace. There are two main reasons for that:

1. My fitness level at the beginning of the Andrew Training Program, was not good. When I began, I had a heckuva time running slow enough to keep my heart rate in the zone it needed to be for long slow/recovery runs.
2. The amount of snow we’ve had and/or the terrible footing I’ve had to run in. Maintaining any kind of pace has been extremely difficult.

The footing on yesterday’s run was mostly pretty good (I’d say 75% good). It gave me a chance to relax a bit and work on one aspect of my form I’ve neglected lately – that being that I tend to “sit” a bit when I run. This is hard to explain but, in the movie Without Limits, there is a scene where Bill Bowerman is trying to teach Steve Prefontaine not to “sit”. In the movie, Steve doesn’t understand what Bill is trying to get him to do so the coach pushes his butt forward and says, “Like at the point of maximum penetration”. Sorry for the graphic image but …it’s effective!

With the better footing, focus on form and a slightly higher heart rate, I had a very comfortable run:

Distance: 9.12
Time: 1:28:20 (a couple minutes faster than previous best efforts)
Pace: 9:41 miles/minute
Average Heart Rate: 153 (a bit higher than previous efforts – still very comfortable, however)

This makes me happy because it puts my long run pace very near to where it was in previous marathon training efforts.

Yesterday I ran home (90 minutes) easy.

Distance: 9.12
Time: 90:26
Pace: 9:54 min/mile
Average Heart Rate: 148 (even with a drift up to 160 in the last mile)

Today I had a hard run.

Distance: 6.67 miles
Time: 60:20
Pace: 9:02
Average Heart Rate: 160

Boring post, I know. I am swamped with website fixit stuff.

Well, I’ve had some interesting times this past few days.

As per Coach’s wise instructions, I took Saturday off from running. However, some of the rest that day was negated by the fact I got up at 4:30 A.M. to drive friends to the airport. I was back in bed at 6:30 and slept for another two hours but getting up that early really eff’d me up. I was tired all day.

I ran on Sunday (a “hard” effort) and was sluggish. I felt rested but the body just didn’t feel in a mood to run hard. Took a while to get the heart rate to target. Interestingly, I was only a city block short in terms of distance I’ve covered in my last couple of “hard” efforts.

Yesterday morning I awoke to find Complete Running offline. Ugg. What could be wrong? After a bit of investigation, and some help from my host, it was determined we’d been the target of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) attack. It took all morning to get things sorted out. We are still under attack, but we’ve been able to repel most of it now. Crossing fingers.

Yesterday’s long run was a pleasure. Two hours in nice warm temps and relatively good footing (compared to what we’ve had the last few weeks). Details:

Distance: 12-ish miles
Pace: 10:08
Average Heart Rate: 150

and sometimes you get kicked. Today I was on the latter end of the deal.

Today’s shortcoming began right after yesterday’s run. No, that’s not exactly right – it began early this week. You see, I’ve been struggling this past few days with what Andrew warned me would eventually come – fatigue.

For the most part, I’ve been able to battle through but today was different and, to get back to what I began saying, today’s shortcoming began last night. I went to bed early enough but I just couldn’t sleep. I was hot. My whole body was hot. It was the kind of heat that comes when you go to bed too soon after a run or other kind of workout. Do you know what I mean? It’s that hot, combustion feeling – like your body is still working off the workout as you try to sleep. The bottom line: I got very little rest and woke up tired.

All morning I questioned whether I should run. I felt tired and very heavy-legged. I dragged myself out there for today’s hard effort making a deal with myself that I’d take as long as I needed to warm up to the hard stuff.

To put it bluntly, I couldn’t get out of warmup gear. Try as I might, I was stuck. I had ZERO energy. None. Nadda.

I got 20 minutes out and stopped, walked ten steps and turned around knowing I didn’t have enough in the tank to run fast or even at all for an hour. Then I took a short cut and made it back to the office in 30 minutes.

If I understand Andrew right, cutting short a run means cancelling the next one so that means I’ll be taking tomorrow off. Do I have that right coach?

If so, my new running-days-in-a-row streak ends at 23 days.

I’m at the point in my running “career” where I know the difference between not having the mental toughness to finish a run versus not having anything left in my body. Today’s experience was definitely in the latter camp so I wont beat myself up over this.