Days 3 and 4 of Ten Days of Running

By the way, above is the soccer ball I located and kicked home for 3/4 of a mile on Friday, which was Day 1 of 10 Straight Days of Running. I suppose it's now my icon for the festival.

Yesterday was Day 3 of running, and the first of 4 bricks (I don't call ANYTHING except a bike followed by a run a brick workout, and don't you ever call something else a brick around me) in 10 days. I'll be doing a brick workout every other day now, so yesterday (Sunday), then Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. At least that's the plan.

Coach had written yesterday's bike workout as if it would take 2.5 hours, but when I added it up, it was more like 3.5. Since it was such a nice day, I was good for 3.5 hours, maybe even more. But I'd never done a workout like this, and it looked pretty hard on paper:

Warmup: 30'
Main Set: Repeat this 4 times: [25' at 85-90% of FTP, 12' at FTP, easy 10]'.

I didn't feel great on Sunday morning--it was a combination of having run fairly hard (although not racing), and then eating like crap Saturday night. My good friend, Matt, is being deployed to Afghanistan (and his mom broke her hip yesterday and is touch and go since she already has emphysema), and he had a big party, and I indulged myself in appetizers, jelly beans, fried chicken, cake, miniature eclairs (THOSE were good) and a few beers. I had not so much a beer hangover (I didn't drink that much), but kind of a food hangover. My body just isn't used to that sort of thing.

Anyway, the day dawned cool, but it was warming fast. I popped a couple of Tylenol 8-hour, hoping that would fix me up, and it was good for my head but not my body. I headed out, and the warmup felt fine. I went to my usual stomping grounds (Fermilab) for intervals, and pounded out the first 2 repeats without too much trouble. When I hit the 3rd one, try as I might, I just couldn't muster the required power output. That's OK, I still got repeat #3 with decent power, just not as much as I wanted. Based on how I was feeling, I decided to bag the 4th repeat and just ride "easy-ish" home, knowing I still had to run off the bike. I hope this type of workout feels a bit better this coming weekend, because I have more of the same. This is hard, focused work (big surprise there!).

I frankly felt like shit when I got home, even though I had hydrated well and even ate gels (yuck), so I know I had plenty of calories in me to run on. The order was for 30', negative split the run. OK, fine, so I'll just go out REAL SLOW. I'm no longer wearing my HRM, so without too much time elapsed after getting my bike in the house, I was out and about and "running." It didn't feel like I was running--it felt like I was shuffling through sand. But that was fine. At least I felt like I could tough out 30', which was the main point.

I get to the Mile 1 mark and I'm thinking I'm running 9+ mpm. Nope. 8:40. WTF??? How am I running like that when I didn't get much sleep, I ate like crap the night before, I was losing power on the ride and it just felt like I was running in sand? Oh well, soldier on. I was flummoxed between the way I felt and the speed I was going. Run up to the 15' point and actually a little more since I'm supposed to negative split, and I know I can at least go a little faster on the way home because of one slight downhill. But come on, even just maintaining pace would be fine today.

When I get to the start of the last mile, I'm like, OK, what the hell, may as well try and push it. I'm less than 9 minutes from being done with this bad boy, there's barely any wind, let's just go. So I push what I think is a little harder, and my lungs don't feel any worse, and I feel like the aerobic capacity is certainly there, and I take short steps anyway, and it's a gorgeous day, so I push on and get to my house and voila, 7:40. SEVEN FORTY! How did I do that?

I started my workout late (11AM), ended late, and so I made a promise to myself that curfew was 8PM, to ensure I got some sleep so I could actually wake up and swim early today. I had a little bit of trouble falling asleep because my metabolism was racing, but I got the job done.

This morning, when I awoke, I felt pretty toasted from the last week. 17.3 hours, and that's just training for a 1/2 Ironman! But I got in my 5 hours of running (and great running at that), some high intensity biking and a decent amount (11,000 yards) of swimming. And I'm lifting a bit more already, too, so I'm marching on with my 2006-2007 goals and objectives.

I only swam 2200 yards this morning, just a drill workout. It felt pretty good, though, and then I thought, OK, running AGAIN. Day 4 out of 10. I only had to run 45', with 10' of strides in there. I delayed getting outdoors in gorgeous weather, and then it started to rain. Oh well, off to the Y I go.

Today was my first run on the treadmill without the HRM. What a difference! There was no number telling me how I should or might feel, and it just felt great! I even tested out new pace zones for future use. I was shocked at how good my legs felt.

Maybe it's just a mental thing, but this running stuff is the bomb! Now I know better than to think I will have 10 days straight of great runs, but I will assume they'll be great unless I prove otherwise. As long as I stay on top of stretching, nutrition and sleep, I should be good to go.