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.
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.