Training Archive: PGIn the 7 days ending 2007-01-13:
| [csv] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| « | » |
| » now | |||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||
| S | M | T | W | H | F | S | ||||||||
Saturday Jan 13 | ||
| road running race 45:42 [4]6.2 mi (7:22 / mi) vdot: 44.3 | |
| weight:138lbs shoes: Pegasus 08/06 | ||
| 10K at Forest Park, despit saying to Phil at the end of yesterday's run that that workout had been hard enough that now I had no need whatsoever to go to the race the next day. But it seems like I forgot.
Though my legs didn't. A lot of effort for a lousy time, another personal worst. The excitement came just before the 4-mile mark, when Lyn Walker went cruising by. Wow, you're doing great, I said, or something like that. I'm going too fast, was her response. So I spent the next couple minutes coming to grips with the fact that she was going to beat me, and I think I was actually quite content with that, and certainly pleased for the good race she seemed to be having. And then all of a sudden she slowed down (I know I didn't speed up, about the same mile split as the previous ones -- 7:50 uphill, 7:25, 7:22, 7:17, 7:22, 6:57 downhill, 1:28), and I went by her. She still got another age record, 46:06, pretty cool. Light rain, mid 40s. | ||
| road running 18:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Pegasus 08/06 | ||
| Before and after, mostly with George and Lyn. Could tell my legs weren't there, especially for the 10 minutes after when I had trouble making it the hill to my car, even at a very slow pace.
| ||
| Note | |
| Stopped on the way home at East Mountain to take a long walk. Started slow, finished very well, 75. Rain had just stopped, quite nice. Very few people out but quite a few ducks.
| ||
Friday Jan 12 | ||
| trail running 1:06:32 [3] | |
| rhr:52 weight:137.5lbs shoes: Pegasus 08/06 | ||
| With Phil (and all his gadgets, including something that rings like a cell phone everytime we've supposedly gone a mile, though Phil assumes it's really a little more than a mile).
Mountain bike trails on the south side of Norwottuck. Nice training route, though it would be a lot more fun if I wasn't feeling rather fragile. No long hills, but constantly up and down and very twisty, really good route to practice turning. Starting at the parking on the south side, we took BA-FE-FS-FO-PW, took 48 minutes to get to the north end of Pete's Wicked, and we for sure weren't going to do an out and back, then returned via OS, the main trail for a while and then TW. Much quicker back, also downhill mostly. There's a nice looking map of all the trails on the Hampshire College web site, very pretty, even looks like someone went out with a GPS to map them, but I hope for the sake of the GPS maker that wasn't the case. The general concept is right -- there are lots of turns, squeezing a lot of trail into a small area -- but the location sucks, and I don't need a GPS to tell me that. It was actually good practice taking along the O' map, which has some of the trails we ran on (I think some are more recent), and more or less accurately. The trail makers seemed to like to go over every bit of rock, makes for a more technical trail I guess, so it was hard to keep reading the map. I managed pretty well where the trail was on the O' map. Elsewhere I was just guessing, mainly trying to remember the general route. Which I remembered well enough to see how far off the bike map is. But at least it is good enough to give an idea for a nice run. Note -- I thought it might be nice to match the color of my text to the color of my bar graph. Seems to just make it hard to read, even harder than the white on black standard. May be a short lived experiment! | ||
| C • colors 3 | ||
Thursday Jan 11 | ||
| trail running 32:31 [3] | |
| weight:137.5lbs shoes: Air Max Trail 12/06 | ||
| Checking out a few new jeep roads (not newly created, just new to me) northeast of Eaglebrook Schiool, including a few minutes off trail. Felt like I hadn't done that for a while, which was true, kept knocking my hat off. Chilly, a little ice, but not bad.
| ||
| track 13:34 [4]3.2 km (4:14 / km) | |
| shoes: Air Max Trail 12/06 | ||
| Now warmed up, 4 x 800 on the track, 200 in between. 3:24, 3:24, 3:24, 3:22. Hadn't known what to expect, hoping no worse than 3:30, so this was ok. Decent effort. Butt/hamstring hurt the whole time, nothing new there, but tolerable. And I think it was ok to have done this.
As usual, harder to do a track workout alone. Plan was just what I did, but it took some willpower not to cut it short. | ||
| C • The willpower to complete the ... 3 | ||
| track 4:38 [2]0.8 km (5:47 / km) | |
| shoes: Air Max Trail 12/06 | ||
| The 4 slow 200s. Didn't feel like any more afterwards so I headed home for a late lunch, bowl of soup and 2 apples. Hopefully we've seen the holiday peak for the G, now have to get it down a bit. | ||
Wednesday Jan 10 | ||
| trail running 52:24 [3] | |
| weight:137.5lbs shoes: Air Max Trail 12/06 | ||
| Short summary -- from the gate up to the top of Toby (29:05) and back (23:19). A dusting of snow and some ice, but footing mostly ok. 30 degrees, windy, first day it's felt like winter.
Longer version -- You really don't want to surge too often, and you for sure don't want to escalate. It occurred to me that what really was called for was a "de-escalation" so I made my way to the top of Toby and then de-escalated for all I was worth. It felt great! And I'd really recommend it to anyone else that has escalation on their mind. De-escalation is just a whole lot more fun. Of course, you have to be a little careful, particularly this time of year. I went sliding on the ice a couple of times, no damage done, but enough to remind of the time maybe 20 years ago when Swampfox had taken up residence in Sunderland. And we went out for a run on a very cold winter day, only a couple of degrees above zero if at all. We went all around on the upper trails and after about 90 minutes we did a full de-escalation and were on our way back along the low route, following a snowmobile trail, when it came to a small creek. And the bridge was in need of repair, one of the beams was busted and the other was rotated a bit and all the cross slats were gone, so it wasn't the easiest thing to cross. And it may have had a touch of ice on it. It only took about 3 quick steps to get across, no problem for me, but then Swampfox hesitated partway, and then he slowly lost his balance, and then slowly fell over backwards into the creek. The creek was only a foot or so deep, but he was all under except for his head. My initial thought was to leave him there, but then it occurred to me -- who would organize the 1000-day? Would I have to move to Laramie and take up a life of equal parts of training and gardening and organizing O' events? Trying not to laugh too hard, I pulled him out and we did a first-class surge on the 15 minutes left to run home and get him straight into the hot shower. He will probably claim not to remember this. | ||
Tuesday Jan 9 | ||
| trail running 55:45 [3] | |
| weight:138.5lbs shoes: Air Max Trail 12/06 | ||
| Excellent day. Started out by winning a disagreement with the Mass. Department of Revenue for a client of mine, then off to the golf course, 4th round in January, unreal, a little rinky-dink course but a 75 is still a 75, though we were lucky we started on the early side because the Deerfield River was rising and by the time we were done the first hole was pretty much underwater/unplayable. And then over to run my wintertime hour loop on Greenfield Ridge, only even though it's January there isn't anything resembling snow or ice, and what's left is just the nicest sweetest rolling trails, hardly even any wet spots despite lots of rain, and what made it even better is that towards the end I tossed in about a 5-minute ....
Surge! And that felt so good, surges that do that for you, even if afterwards you think maybe it wasn't so smart, but then it did feel good! That's the thing about surges.... As I said to a friend at the Body Shoppe afterwards, the first day in quite a while when the legs didn't feel like shit. Progress, maybe? | ||
| C • Surge 19 | ||
Monday Jan 8 | ||
| trail running 39:57 [3] | |
| weight:139lbs shoes: Air Max Trail 12/06 | ||
| I was thinking today that some change is needed in my training, that something new is needed if I want to start making some real progress, a "new way forward" perhaps. Because the things I've been trying since I decided that staying the course was a disaster -- the ramp, at one with nature -- well, things were still pretty much a disaster even though I might not care to admit it.
So anyway, after much consultation, I've decided it's time for a change in strategy if I ever want to win this struggle. And the strategy that is clearly called for is a Surge. No, not just the surge in the G that has been going on for a while. A real Surge, with a capital S. It feels really good to have this figured out, and I know that better times lie ahead. And the new strategy is already working. Got out late afternoon after the rain ended and surged from the gate up the jeep road to the summit, not sure how far I was going, made it as far as the hairpin before losing my willpower. 22:09 up, 17:47 back. Really optimistic about the future! | ||
| Note | |
| Found one more fine AOWN photo, and this is really At One With Nature -- Craig Murray (left) and Jim Baker, in a competition in Alaska in 1994 to see who can stand in a glacial stream the longest. The icepack ended about 100 yards upstream.
Jim was the winner, about 4 minutes, clearly he has no pain receptors in his feet. The prize/motivation was a Snickers bar. 
| ||
| C • timing 1 | ||
Sunday Jan 7 | ||
| road running 1:30:05 [3] | |
| weight:139.5lbs shoes: Air Max Trail 12/06 | ||
| A glimmer of hope. SMAC fun run, included the hilly 10-mile course in 80:35 without pushing the pace, a good bit better than the 85-90 I expected. Hamstrings still sore, getting tight at the end, but quads were better, and I didn't have that dead-tired feeling I've had on my runs in the last month.
Afterwards, at the club's annual meeting, got the award for the "oustanding male runner of 2006." A nice surprise, though it was a very good year, at least until the beginning of October. | ||