Monday, October 17, 2011

Last 4 weeks of training

Week of 10-10-11:
Monday: 7 miles with Holly, Rattlesnake + Pipeline, 1000' gain. Cold outside. :(
Tuesday: 10 miles: 2 mile warmup + 10k on a treadmill: 35:25 + 2 mile cooldown. The time sounds like I'm getting really fit again, but the treadmill was stuck in a 2% decline, so it converts to a 36:57. That being said, it would be roughly 45 seconds faster at sea level, I still have to drop a little weight before I'll be down to my typicaly "racing" self, and it wasn't particularly difficult until the last mile or 2, so this does give me some confidence.
Wednesday: 12 miles, treadmill, 2% decline (just for fun this time, to make it a little faster), 1:16. This was overall moderately easy except that my calves were a bit sore from my first "fast" day in awhile the day before.
Thursday: 6 miles, easy, treadmill, 46 minutes, flat. Nice to recover from the previous day, legs were sore after 2 days at faster pace than anything I've been running on the trails.
Friday: 4 miles, treadmill. Just wasn't really feeling it, so I did 4 easy miles. Don't recall the time.
Saturday: Off.
Sunday: 9 miles, 4200' gain. Mt Olympus, up and down (plus some extra around the summit due to getting lost literally 3 times. I actually managed to almost make it up the entire runnable portion of the mountain without stopping, but .25 from the top, I tripped over a rock, faceplanted in the dirt, and just lost all my momentum, so I had to hike a few of the last few ultra steep portions. Oh, and by runnable, I'm talking about the 3.1 mile/4000' gain portion from the road to the saddle, after which almost everything in the last 200' of gain is a rock scramble/climb, so not runnable, even for someone like Kilian Jornet. I'm thinking about getting back up to do this again in the next few days; I now know that it's totally runnable with proper pacing, even if it's the most ridiculously difficult climb, basically, ever.
Total: 48 miles, 5200' gain. Would've liked to have hit more, but those treadmill runs have been surprisingly hard on my legs. Quality was still pretty good.


Week of 10-3-11:
I got in a full 11 mile run of Porter Fork from Mill Creek Canyon road (over 4000' gain without walking or stopping at all, starting from the Canyon Road, going up to the peak to the right of Porter Fork Pass, which I don't know the name of). My next most substantial run was probably the 12 miles I did on an indoor 7.5-lap-to-the-mile track. This was rather interesting since I was pacing just a hair slower than 7:30 per mile, so I kept running splits of 60-62 seconds or so and checking my watch literally every minute. If I run anything on this track again, I won't wear a watch as it just gets ridiculous to check my time that often. Next best run was probably a 9 mile run in Little Cottonwood Canyon on the White Pine/Red Pine trails. I honestly don't recall what I did on the other 2 runs individually anymore, but I do remember that the weekly mileage was 45 miles between 5 runs, which was pretty low mostly because I had some personal crap to sort out all week long (ie, breaking up with my girlfriend of 2 years the previous week, and dealing with the logistics of that). Despite this, quality was pretty good most days with almost no junk miles.

Week of 9-26-11
As soon as I got back into training after the blisters getting better (mentioned below), I got pretty severe food poisoning for about 4 days, so I lost more time, which sucked. Once again, only 3 days for 30-something miles. Disappointing.

Week of 9-19-11:
Those blisters I had previously mentioned got really bad, so I had to take off a couple days. I only ended up getting in 3 days of training for 36 miles. Disappointing.

Life is back to usual now and while mileage has been low lately, the last 2 weeks have been pretty good quality. It seems like my general fitness is pretty decent now, so I'm looking to start boosting that mileage so I can run a 100 mile PR at a 24 hour race in 2-3 months. That's all for now.