I wasn't quite sure how things were going to go for my runs this weekend.  I was schedule to run 22 miles on Saturday and 1 hour 45 minutes on Sunday.  I got up and headed out the door at 6 a.m. at 30 degrees.  I may have been slightly overdressed but I was comfortable and not cold but I was sweating pretty bad which is nothing new.

The goal was to run four 5.5 miles loops in under an hour each and stopping at the house each lap to swap bottles, grab a gel and sandwich if I wanted it.  The first lap went well running right about where I wanted to be walking a portion of 3 hills in miles 4 and 5 and finished in just under 56 minutes.

Lap two I ran a little too fast, I really wasn't paying attention to the pace I was just running how I felt.  I tried to walk the exact spots as I did the first lap on miles 4 and 5 and finished lap to in under 54 minutes.  A little more than 2 minutes faster.  When I got to the house I need to swap out shirts and jacket because sweat was dripping out the bottom of the sleeves.  It turned out to be detrimental.

Lap three, as soon as I started running the legs just didn't want to work.  They were tight and freezing from sweating while I was in the house and now outside at approximately 35 degree now.  I ran and walked trying to get the legs to work again.  I was struggling through mile 12, 13, and 14 but managing.  Mile 15, well that didn't go so well and was actually the slowest mile of the day.  I couldn't run any of the hills so walked a whole lot more on Lap 3.  I stopped a grabbed a gel and a sandwich (peanut butter and honey)

Lap four, I walked the first portion of this while I ate the sandwich before I started running and it still managed to be faster than mile 15.  The final lap I just wanted to survive and strategically picked out little goals.  Run 5 light poles and then walk 1; run to the next intersection and walk the intersection, etc.  Anything to keep me focused and just keep moving.

To the right is the comparison of each lap by mile and average pace.  It was a far cry from how I ran my 18 miler a few weeks ago and there was not consistency in this run.  It turned into a survival run.

Saturday night my back was really bothering me and I had some shooting pain into both knees and my right hip.  I was sore.  Muscles hurt all over and I woke up Sunday with a real tight right calf.

Sunday I waited until 11:00 to go for a run since it was sunny and a little warmer than the 28 for a low.  Off I went with some tight legs and I just wanted to keep it somewhat consistent.  I headed out with the goal of to run a half mile then walk .05 and repeat.  I did pretty well at keeping it going and for whatever reason when I hit mile 7 mentally I just fell apart.  I struggled to keep running and probably walk .4 of a mile.  I took a gel and then got to running again and finished strong.  Overall I felt pretty good to finish the weekend off with 31.5 miles.  Below are a few images.

An hour run today, I kept it much slower and walked the uphills today.  I didn't want to push myself too much after yesterdays run.  My legs are tight and sore and I need to stretch much more than I did last night.  Hopefully they loosened up a bit after this run.  Right at 6 miles in 62 minutes.

​Happy training everyone.

Man time flies and it is so easy to miss posting about a week of training.  In this case I think it was been 2 weeks missed.

Overall I am hanging in there and had a few good weeks and then a few days after I did 18 miles at a great pace I did something to my right calf (non TKR leg).  It was the first time in 20 years of running that I called my wife to come get me.  I wasn't far from the house but I didn't want to make things worse than they were.  The right calf injury was 23 December.  I took 7 days off from doing anything, after all it was Christmas and I was driving out to see the grandkids and it just gave me an excuse not to run while I was there.

7-days later, 30 December, I went for a short run to test the calf out.  No issues, 2.25 miles at a sub-10 minute pace.  So why not pick up where I left off on my training, it has only been 7 days.  So Saturday for my long run I was suppose to run 12 miles, I decided I would do 20 since I missed the 20 miler.  I headed out for my normal 6.5 mile loop and during mile 5 I felt a slight twinge in my right calf.  I pulled up and walked home.  I didn't want to make it any worse or aggravate it any more than I already had.

Sunday I rode my bike on the trainer for 50 miles to include a 6.1 mile Zwift race. Monday I followed up what should have been a swim day and made it another ride day since I just didn't feel like driving to the gym.  I added another hour on the bike.  I wasn't putting in any real hard efforts just keeping it rolling along.

Today, I headed out for another run to see how things felt.  It went well with 7.25 miles in just over 7 minutes averaging 9:45 pace.  I am happy with that.  Hopefully everything continues to go well and I am able to hit my 20 miler this weekend.

I am 2-weeks from having hernia surgery which will take me out of running for 2-weeks so hopefully that doesn't set me back to much.

​Happy training all.

​I adjusted my schedule to replace the swim workout with a 40-minute bike workout.  I kept it easy for the first 6 miles and then I pushed the pace for the next 5 miles keeping the power output near 2.3 watts per kilogram.
 
I turned Tuesday into a tempo run.  I was scheduled for 7 miles but didn’t have the time to make it a conversational pace.  I had a blast on this run and kept my heart rate down.  It stayed lower than some of my recovery runs over the past few weeks.  I pushed the pace slightly but kept it under control with the intent to stay between 9:00 and 9:30 pace.  The few miles I exceeded 9:00 miles were due to downhill toward the end of the mile and running at a comfortable pace.  My mile splits were: 9:51, 9:07, 9:29, 9:06, 8:58, 8:43, 9:18. 
 
Wednesday was hills.  I was scheduled to run for 50 minutes and I found a nice little climb of about 45 feet in about .15 of a mile.  I stayed pretty steady for the first few and then it got really tough during the last 3.  I fell apart on the last climb and walked a bit before heading back to the vehicle.  Overall though I was happy with the efforts.
 
Bike ride on Thursday morning before making a 7-hour road trip to Alabama.  I didn’t make this anything too strenuous.  
 
Friday was a welcomed rest day and then into Saturday morning was my long run scheduled for 16-18 miles.  I felt good at the start running pretty much a flat route.  At 7.5 miles in I was holding steady at about a 9:40 pace and then I felt a slight pop which kind of freaked me out.  I came to a walk for the next 1/2 mile or so.  No issues so I picked up a run heading back.  I was definitely slowed things down and after the walk it made it much harder to get going and maintain any sort of pace and I had quite a few miles in the mid-11’s. I told myself if I got back to the vehicle in 2:48 or less I would do another mile.  I didn’t make it.  I got back at 2:49. I was also out of fluids and gels so I decided not to continue on.
 
My plan on Sunday was to get up and run before we made the drive home, but it changed.  Since my Son had to leave his house at 7:00 AM, I decided I would run once I got home.  Well needless to say after a 7-hours in the car I had no desire to run.  So I skipped it.  Ugh.

​This week was not what it should have been.  I need the recovery week but now that it is over I don’t feel all that recovered.
 
Monday, I skipped my swim workout as the weather wasn’t that great and I had no desire to drive to the gym so I just skipped it altogether.
 
Tuesday, I headed out for an easy 42 minute run.  Again, supposed to be a recovery week and ran at a 10:00 pace.  This was a bit faster than it should have been.
 
Wednesday was another recovery run, this one was a bit slower where I should have been yesterday.  The bad thing about Wednesday, I had a ultrasound done and confirmed that I have an 1.4 cm umbilical hernia. Now I wait until I get an appointment with general surgery.  I think I am just going to have the procedure done as soon as possible.
 
Thursday was a much slower bike ride than I have been doing over the past several weeks and made it a much better recovery day with no major surges or sprints.
 
Friday was a complete day off and it was much needed.
 
Saturday, I had a terrible night’s sleep and I ended up starting much later than my normal run and did this run on the TM.  I always have a little bit more swelling and pain when I run on the treadmill verses outside, but 10 miles complete varying the incline throughout taking it to an incline of 10 twice for a 1/4 mile each time.
 
And finally finishing the week off with a 25 minute run, which was optional on the schedule.  I figured since I skipped Monday’s workout I didn’t want to skip a second workout for the week.
 
Next week, I adjusted the schedule slightly to include a bike in place of the swim workout.  I am already considering shortening the long run on Saturday since I will be at my son’s house for the weekend.  Not sure how I am going to get the two long runs in since it isn’t the safest place to run.
 
All in all, a good week of running with 20 miles on the schedule.

Another successful week, although this is the first week I didn’t complete all of my workouts as planned.  I am happy with the results and debated the change to the schedule from 3-weeks training, 1-week recovery to 2-weeks training, 1-week recovery.  I will see how December goes before I make any adjustment to the schedule.
 
Monday, I had a good swim and felt pretty strong in the pool with some of my fastest splits this year.  Of course, that isn’t saying much since I only swam once prior to COVID and all the pools shutting down and just started swimming in October. 
 
Tuesday, I focused on heart rate training for my run.  I would run until my heart rate hit 165 and then I would come to a walk until it dropped below 150.  165 is mid-zone 3 using heart rate reserve for the calculation.  It proved interesting on how quickly my heart rate spiked but dropped just as quick.  I believe most of the issues is due to my poor diet. I need to get my eating habits under control before my heart rate will become steadier.
 
Wednesday, I had a great speed workout with 5 x ½ mile intervals with the goal of staying sub-8:00 pace.  I nailed it with interval 1 and 5 being the slowest.  I struggled to keep the last interval below 8:00 pace but I held on.
 
Thursday was another virtual cycling race on Zwift.  This one I decided to go a bit longer @24 miles for the race after a 15-minute warm-up.  The race was 6-laps at 4 miles each.  I tried to stay someone conservative at the beginning and manage to keep the first two laps dead on at 19.7 mph and then the pace started to drop off and by the time I hit lap 5 and 6 my legs were done.  I tried to ride the entire ride at about 2.0 watts / Kg knowing I should be able to ride at 2.4 watts / Kg for over an hour.  It was a complete fail at maintaining any type of consistent ride.  The last lap I averaged 16.5 mph and didn’t have anything left in the tank.  I averaged 1.8 watts / Kg for the 24-miles.
 
Friday was a much-needed rest day before the weekly long run.  It didn’t turn into a rest day as I headed outside to cut a tree down and it turned into a lot more work than I was planning and I felt it Saturday morning.
 
Saturday, I felt ok when I got up and had a snack and about 2 hours later I headed out for my run and again I wanted to slow things down and keep the heart rate under control.  It didn’t take long before spiked, less than 15 minutes and it jumped over 165 which was much quicker than the normal 35-40 minutes before it would spike.  I couldn’t keep it down and then the stomach started cramping.  I felt fine when I was walking but when I would put any type of pace in it would cramp up with some severe gas pains.  At about 5 miles I decided to call it quits and gradually made my way home for a total of 9.25 miles verse the 16 miles I had scheduled.
 
Sunday was part 2 of my long running weekend and I was planning on running at Raven Rock with a route that would give me roughly 450-feet of elevation gain.  I modified the planned route slightly when I got there and then headed out for my 70-minute run.  Holy crap, I was not ready for the climbing.  The first mile and a 1/4 was all downhill and the run back was all uphill, roughly 200 feet of climbing, and then I started the 5 1/2-mile loop I was originally planning and from my insight I knew the first half was the easiest so I took it somewhat easy with walking up the steeper portions and even walking some of the steep, rocky, rough downhills.  I just didn’t want to take a tumble.  It was rough, lots of rocks, roots, ruts, etc. all on the trail that I had to keep my eye on it and the leaves covering the trail didn’t help.  I almost took a tumble coming down on a steep portion but managed to keep it upright.  Miles 7 was brutal and I walked the majority of it going up with little bursts of “running” where I thought I could.  My legs were on absolute fire by this time.  Mile 7 had 200+ feet climbing.  Overall the route had 900+ feet of climbing and I was not stable by no means.  This will start to become my normal Sunday run route.
 
Lesson learned, I need to get my Bosu Ball out and start doing squats to help strengthen the legs and core for the trail running.
 
All in all, a great week of training with a total of 27.7 miles of running; 111 miles for November; 930 miles for the year.  I am ready for this rest/recovery week.

​Another good week of training.  I was able to hit all my workouts as planned.  Monday my legs were tight from the weekends runs.  I stretch and rolled the best I could through the day.  I had a good swim, however I did you a pull buoy for a good part of the swim to let the legs recover a little more so I went a little further for a total of 1750 yards.
 
The legs felt better on Tuesday morning, but still a little sore and I felt it throughout the run.  I did manage to run at a 9:30 pace, probably faster than it should have been.  The heart rate was higher than it has been which is a good sign of fatigue, maxed out at 205.  I will continue to monitor it.

​Wednesday was hill repeats, I didn’t run these all out but focused on bounding up the hills.  It was a pretty tough workout considering.  I did 4 x repeats consisting of .07 miles (15’ elevation) with .07 walk back down for recovery and then .15 miles (50’ elevation) with .08 jog/.07 walk down for recovery.  I have to find some longer hills that are not terrible far from the house.
 
Thursday was my cycling workout of 1:15 and I decided to do a virtual race, probably not the smartest thing to do but, hey Friday is a rest day before my long run so why not.  I put a nice long warm-up of 40+ minutes before the 10.3 mile race began. I have been holding a little over 2.6 w/kg for these races but today I just didn’t have it in me to hold it and was under 2.3 w/kg. For whatever reason, cycling always tends to bother my knee and it has been like that since my surgery.

​Fridays was a much-needed rest day and I focused on lots of fluids to be ready for Saturdays long run.  My goal for Saturday was to sleep in a little and maybe start running closer to 6:00 a.m. and only do a short portion of it in the dark.
 
Saturday morning rolls around and I wake of 3:50 a.m. so I started my run just after 5:00.  I just couldn’t sit around any longer waiting.  My goal was to run the flatter portion of the loop first and finish with the much more difficult hills.  I planned on eating solid foods every 4 miles so I ate 1/2 a peanut butter and honey sandwich at mile 5, 9, and 13 which consisted of me taking my running vest off and getting the sandwich out of the back of the vest.  I kept an average 10:00 pace through mile 10 and then miles 11 and 12 were the worst of the climbing.  I planned to walk up the hills to save the legs a little.  At this point I started to feel both groin muscles starting to tighten up.  It definitely affected my running gait and I had to pay attention to ensure I kept descent form.  My mile splits were: 10:39, 9:45, 9:39, 9:48, 11:02 (feeding zone), 9:44, 9:30, 9:23, 10:50 (feeding zone), 10:10, 12:03 (two nasty hills), 11:11 (one nasty hill), 10:46, and 10:21.  I was still a good 1/2 mile from the house so I picked up a run walk approach for the cool down.  The remainder of the day I focused on rehydrating and stretching throughout the day.  I drank nearly 50 ounces of water over the 2 1/2 hour period and still lost 3 pounds.

Once again, I was planning on sleeping in on Sunday and running after church.  However, I woke up at 3:30, so I was out the door running by 4:45.  It was tough, the legs were sore and I could feel the groin muscles stiffness.  It made for a tough run.  The plan was to maintain a 11:00 pace to include a few walk breaks, but the further I went the more often the walk breaks.  I ended up finishing just over a 11-minute pace.
 
All in all, a great week of training with a total of 31.3 miles of running and I went over 900 miles today for the year.

Next week increases the total miles slightly and then a recovery week.  I am ready for it.  I may need to adjust to have recovery weeks every third week instead of every fourth week.  I will base this on how I feel after the first cycle is complete.

​Train Smart and Happy Training.

The first week of training has started off nice and nailed all of my workouts at a slightly fast pace than I had projected.  My long run on Saturday was a mix of weather, high 30s, some light rain and if didn't know any better I would have had said snow as well, and a beautiful sunrise. I was overdressed as the forecast was low 30s.  Today’s (Sunday) run was absolutely miserable, a stark contrast to yesterday, low 60s, high winds (20+) and rain.  The rain was falling sideways with the strong winds.  Even though I was running with a head lamp at one point the rain was so strong I couldn’t see the road in front of me.  
 
The speed workout on Wednesday I missed the 3rd and 4th split as I only had my watch set for two repeats instead of 4.  The goal was to run 4 x 1/2 mile intervals at sub-4 minutes (8:00 pace).  Intervals were 3:48, 3:56, 4:07, & 4:09.  However, I didn’t program the watch correctly to do 4 intervals.  So, during the last 2 was all part of my cool-down portion of the workout so the actual times is a close guestimation.  
 
Overall a successful training week with some great workouts with a little over 28 miles of running.  Now onto next weeks plan.

After I had my total knee replacement (TKR) on March 16, 2018 I started to blog about my recovery and my journey to Ironman Maryland in 2019.  Unfortunately, I didn’t stay true to blogging on a regular basis and it eventually fell off.  I never made it to the start line for Ironman Maryland, not because of the total knee replacement but due to other unforeseen medical issues and I pulled out of the race a few weeks prior.  I did however complete Ironman Eagleman 70.3 in June of 2019.
 
In 2020 I had my sights set on running a half marathon at a 2-hour pace scheduled for April and Ironman Augusta 70.3 in September.  Due to the pandemic both were canceled with the half-marathon being canceled only a few weeks prior just as I was in my final training to start tapering to the race.  As we inched closer to Ironman Augusta 70.3, again it was canceled and it just took the wind out of my sails for training for any real purpose.
 
As I followed a friend complete a 100-miler a few weeks ago, I thought why not? I can run an ultra-marathon.  So, I started the search for the perfect race and decided on Knock on Wood 50 miler, called the UnBreakable 50.
 
I realize my journey will be different than most running an ultra-marathon.  I realize I won’t be able to put in the miles that most do.  Even though I have a plan, I know it will get sidetracked and will need to be adjusted based on the TKR.  So here it is, the beginning Week 0.  The plan has been developed and ready to start Week 1 on Monday, November 9, 2020.  Training thus far has been going well.  Running 3 to 4 days a week, swimming twice and cycling 3 times.  I just finished a 21-mile week averaging slightly faster than a 10:00 pace.
 
My ultra-marathon plan is to run 4 days a week, ride once and swim once with back to back long runs on Saturday and Sunday.  Here is Week 1 training plan.

​
The runs are mostly calculated on 11:00 miles with the exception of Speed and Hill workouts they are at 10:00.  My long run will probably be completed based on time not distance.
 
I am a bit over weight at 5’ 11” and weigh 205.  My goal is to get my weight down to 170 prior to race day.  I haven’t been that thin since my marathoning days and typically once I break 180 I kind of stall out because am content at that weight.  We will see.
 
Train Smart and Happy Training.