Training Log Archive: ebone

I rode from home to the North end of the parking lot at Golden Gardens and back, via the BGT. My butt hurt from biking the last couple days, but my legs mostly felt fairly good. I wore running shoes again, and my left calf felt fine, but my right one had some painful cramping after about an hour of riding. I eased up toward the end, and this subsided.

Some riding while BEAST course scouting. I made lots of stops, while Leif and I reviewed the trail mapping (which looks very good) and scouted some checkpoints. The logged time and distance are guesses, since I forgot to start my watch for a few segments.

My left calf hurt some earlier in the day, then starting out on the biking, but it felt fine toward the end of the outing and afterward. I rode in running shoes rather than biking shoes, in order to put less strain on the calf.

After looking all over the house for my aquajogging vest, I gave up and went to the Meadowbrook Pool, hoping to find it in their lost and found. It wasn't there, but I noticed that they have some of the same model that I have for their classes, so if the pool staff found my vest in the locker room, they probably would have assumed that it was one of theirs that didn't get returned. Assuming I decide that I really did leave it there last time, maybe I should just consider it a donation to the Seattle Parks Department.

Anyway, I used one of their vests to aquajog for the little time that remained in the family swim hour. As always, I found it very difficult to get my heart rate up while aquajogging. On the bright side, it didn't hurt my tender left calf at all.

I rode South to the BGT, northbound on the trail to the bridge over Sand Point Way near Matthew's Beach, then back home. My legs felt pretty good. I rode in running shoes instead of biking shoes, because I didn't want to clip in and put too much strain on my left calf. I think I succeeded at this, although I noticed that my right calf hurt a bit toward the end of the ride. I'm not sure why both calves are so touchy right now. Maybe it's from wearing O shoes at the Team Trails last weekend. I guess my calves aren't used to that yet.

My heart rate monitor was picking up bogus signals, maybe from the bike odometer transmitter, so the logged average and max are my guesses.

I decided to take the day off, since my left calf hurts.

I was in North Seattle in the late evening and hadn't run yet, so I decided that, rather than go for a long run and lifting weights, I'd run a 5-mile threshold run on the Nathan Hale track.

I warmed-up for 12:23, during which my left calf started hurting (in the middle of the upper soleus or lower gastroc, I think). I stretched it and did some light form drills, thinking it might go away. It didn't, but it seemed to hurt less when I ran faster, so I decided to go ahead with the workout and see how it felt.

I warmed down 10:19 after the threshold run. My legs felt tired at that point, and my left calf felt like it was cramping/knotting and tingling (sort of like the sensation after hitting ones funny bone.) I hadn't noticed the calf duress during the threshold run.

I ran 8k on the track at around threshold pace. My legs didn't feel particularly good or bad. The pace felt a bit faster than I expected it would, but I didn't have any trouble keeping it up, and I didn't worry about hitting specific lap times, running more by feel. To occupy my mind, I counted strides on several of the laps, and my stride rate was usually about 88 per minute, which I think is a bit lower (so longer strides) than usual. For the last 1.5 miles or so, my lower quads started to feel a slight burn, and they had what felt like pounding fatigue (similar effect to a really long run on pavement) afterward, which leads me to think they're still tired from the weekend. I slowed a bit for the last mile, and it seemed that my breathing became shallower and still relaxed (almost like at long run pace) from the slight change in speed.

I took lap times every 800m, except for once when I miscounted and took the lap time after 1200m. Lap time and avg/max HR:
2:55 153/161
2:57 159/163
2:58 160/162
2:58 163/164
2:57 163/169
4:28 164/168 1200m
1:29 164/166 400m
2:57 165/167
2:59 165/168
3:01 164/167

I went for a pre-breakfast run to Green Lake and back, via 60th, Ravenna Park and Ravenna Blvd. My legs felt pretty good. I took my map from the Postas Cup middle B final, and read through that course again, doing some visualization.

I have some poison oak rash cropping up in a few places, and I hit it with some mostly dried up fluocinonide cream I found; based on past experience, I expect this to only be slightly helpful. Other than that and some modest soreness in my legs and back, I don't seem to be much the worse for wear after a weekend of tough races.

I'm still feeling sort of down today about my long race yesterday. The long is usually my strongest discipline, and I'm quite disappointed to have performed so poorly.

Negative apects of my run:
- When I started, I wasn't ready to race, mentally or physically (shoes untied, struggling to get control descriptions in holder).
- I forgot how important it is to use my compass in this terrain, and I made costly direction mistakes on controls #1 and #2.
- I was cranky and struggled with trying to be more positive for essentially the whole race; continued mistakes were caused by and fueled the crankiness, in an unfortunate positive feedback loop.
- I failed to take the easy (and faster) around route from #7 to #8, something I usually do well.
- I felt relatively tired in the legs and clumsy moving through the terrain; after overshooting #8, I was standing more or less still, tripped backward on a stump, and sat down in a patch of poison oak. This made me extremely cranky.
- I was unmotivated and had trouble pushing; my average heart rate was consequently quite low.
- It is worrisome to me that I can't (or at least didn't) prepare to have a good run in this important race.

Positive aspects of my run:
+ I mostly got up the hills well, even though my legs felt bad.
+ I had the second fastest time from #11 to the finish, just behind winner Oystein Sorensen, so my fitness is pretty good.
+ I never gave up and worked hard to keep paying attention and pushing, even though it wasn't going well; this allowed me to have a bad run instead of a horrible one.
+ I generally made good or at least reasonable route choices.
+ I learned more about the mental side of racing: I was in an aversive (avoiding) mental state, which made me prone to tuning out (not reading the map or paying attention to what I was doing). Eventually, I had to read the map to get around the course, and I had to slow down to do it, after missing better map-reading opportunities. I still don't know why I was in an aversive state, though. And why was I cranky? Sometimes bad things (I made a mistake, the course isn't as fast as I wanted, there's lot's of poison oak on the course) happen and roll off my back, so why did they stick in my craw on Sunday?

C • why 1