Longest Recovery Week Ever

I realize that my mileage is put to shame by many runners, but for me hitting 50km in any one week was and still is a bit of a milestone. So when it happens for the first time during a recovery week I'm allowed to be a bit impressed with myself.

Mother nature decided to dump a bunch of snow overnight and I had to do the last run of the week on some pretty crappy sidewalks. The footing was not good at all and my feet were pretty soaked by the end, but in the end I still had a great run. The goal was to run about ten miles and I ended up doing a bit more, finishing with 16.65km at a decent pace (4:58/km, 7:57/mile). This brought my weekly total to 50.8km. I hit that mileage only once in 2009! It was during training for my first marathon attempt and I broke down not too long afterwards. Now this distance seems like a minimum. The next milestone I am looking forward to achieving is 100km in one week. I hope to get this done long before my marathon training starts in June. If I get there it will mean that I really have established a great base before getting down to marathon training.

Four weeks until the Around the Bay 30k and it's looking more and more like I will be using this race as a training run. Still time to change my mind...

And since I won't be running tomorrow this is also a good time to recap February:

Not too shabby. This was my second highest monthly total ever. The fact that I managed it in the shortest month of the year is pretty satisfying as well.

Friday Already?!

Has it been a whole week of workdays already?! This is crazy. I've been quite busy, but to not have five minutes to post my activities on here is just ridiculous.

Well, being busy I am going to just do a short and dirty rundown of my activities. It's been a recovery week so things have been slow and steady.

Monday: No running, just leg weights. I backed off on the amount of weight on squats and it was good. This was a Holiday so I had to sneak off from the Family on Family Day, but they were kind enough to let me do so.

Tuesday: Got in a nice early morning run of 8.55km around what's becoming a good and trusted route. Been discovering podcasts recently and was listening to Tim and Sid Uncut from theScore.com. They make me laugh. It's difficult to maintain pace and form while laughing... Check them out if you're into sports and a lot of chatter that's completely off topic. Explicit language throughout so watch the young'uns. A good upper body weight training session of chest and arms at lunch left me in that good kind of sore state.

Wednesday: Another morning run of 8.6km followed by more upper body weights, this time of the back and shoulders variety. Ditto on the good kind of sore thing...

Thursday: No running, but more leg weights. Rocking the lunges and single-leg dead lifts. All runners should try single-leg dead lifts. Why? You'll find out if you try them. I don't want to spoil the surprise...

Friday: That brings us to today. The impending snow storm didn't materialize and it was clear when I woke up at 5:40am for another morning run, this time 8.5km in length around the same route. At lunch it was gym time for another chest and arms session wherein I proceeded to soreify my muscles aplenty, and it was good.

Now the weekend holds the promise of more running to complete this most uneventful, but very steady of recovery weeks.

Have a good weekend!

Testing the Ego

As I have been rather sore and a bit tired from the last three weeks of training I've been thinking a lot about my approach to training and what I really want to get out of it. My last post summarized my musings, and the long run was the test to see if I was actually willing to put my intentions into action.

The goal was to run a good distance and spend at least two hours on my feet while minimizing the stress on my legs. Therefore, I decided to try something that I haven't done since my return from calf surgery back in the Fall of 2009: Run/Walk. Yes, walk. Although I didn't know how this would manifest itself when I started my run I quickly decided that I would take a one minute walk break after each 2km segment. I also chose not to include the walking breaks in my total mileage and stopped my Garmin each time. In retrospect I realize that this was dumb and completely driven by my pathetic ego and the metrics that it so craves. My overall average pace would probably not have suffered all that much and I would have been happy with the extra kilometre that I likely walked in the 11 walking breaks that I took.

Nevertheless, I did at least change the display on my Garmin to show only three things: elapsed time, distance, and heart rate. I wanted to not care about pace and only pay attention to my heart rate. Although my Garmin gives me some pretty wonky stats, especially at the beginning of each run, I think it works well enough to keep me honest.

I ended up running 24km and it certainly was not as much of a mental battle as other long runs. That carrot in the form of a walking break really helped to break up the monotony. And the overall pace ended up being decent even if it was a full 20 seconds per kilometre slower than my previous long run. (5:13/km average, which works out to 8:25/mile). Only my last split was under 5:00/km (8:00/mile). And my weekly mileage was the most since last summer at 70.9km (44 miles), which is nice.

Now that I am done my three weeks of higher mileage and intensity for the month I am ready for a bit of a break, active though it may be. Today, for example, I went to the gym and did a much lighter leg weights session than I would normally do. Perhaps this ego will not beat me into the ground after all?

Bring on recovery week!

Questioning My Training Methods - Putting the "S" in LSD

The recent announcement about Boston's qualifying standards got me thinking about how I'm currently approaching my training. Clearly my goal is the all mighty BQ, but in a bigger picture sense my ultimate goal is to run injury-free for as long as possible no matter what. If going after the BQ, whether the old or new standard, jeopardizes the bigger goal then I am left wondering, "What's the point?"

In November of 2009 I got back into running after a major setback suffered while training for my first marathon, which ultimately did not happen. While recovering (with a calf surgery thrown in for good measure) I not only gained 25lbs, but also had plenty of time to reflect on how I would train once my body allowed me to return to the streets. My decision, in retrospect, was easy to make given my history and ultimately the right one. I began to run based solely on Heart Rate and completely ignored pace. My aim was to do all of my running below 140bpm and slowly increase my weekly mileage throughout the year until I was, hopefully, ready to tackle the Marathon in the Fall of 2010. Given that I made it to the starting line, and also finished the race, I have no regrets about this strategy.

Then, having completed my post-Marathon recovery phase and reached the one year mark since my return, I began to experiment with pace in the middle of November 2010. First, I caught onto the whole turnover rate (cadence) thing and realized that mine was way too slow. As I focused on this aspect of running technique I was shocked at how much my pace improved! What once were 6:00/km training runs became 5:00/km training runs with not that much more effort exerted! Not only that, but I felt like the stress on my body was also negligibly higher.

I also started to sprinkle in more speed work and tempo runs and things have been going well other than for one setback in January where I felt a twinge in my right calf while doing some speed intervals on the treadmill.

Things were moving right along nicely. In fact I continued to surprise myself with my ability to maintain (what is for me) an aggressive pace while increasing my weekly mileage. This past Sunday I really nailed a good long run at a pace that last year I would have thought was only possible in a race situation. But all things come at a price and I've been more sore this week than I'd like. I made the decision after Sunday's run that I would not do any speed work or tempo stuff this week because I could anticipate that I'd pushed a bit harder and would likely be a bit drained. However, I didn't know just how sore I would be.

Now it's Friday and I'm still sore. I ran a nice easy 5km this morning and wore my heart rate monitor for the first time all year to, once again, keep me honest. My average worked out to 133bpm, which was perfect, and I will start using this important feedback tool more regularly. That being said, I also don't want to impair my ability to someday BQ, and I'm still hoping that this Fall will allow me a chance at this most worthy of goals.

All that being said, I've been reading a lot about how slow ones long run should be before it gets to the point that it's too slow to be doing you any good. There is no real consensus out there, but the one thing I am realizing is that working on speed during long runs is an invitation to injury. Therefore, I am going to do my best to stay in the right pace range and heart rate zone from now on when doing my long Sunday runs. For me this works out to a pace range of 4:50 - 5:27/km and a heart rate range of 138-152bpm. Clearly, given my long run this past Sunday as noted above, 4:50/km is much too aggressive at the moment. I was likely well above 152bpm for most of the second half of that run, but I wasn't wearing my monitor so I can't say for sure.

It's going to be tough. Slowing down will take a lot of mental fortitude and I will do my best to ignore my ego, which will constantly be telling me to get going faster, to get under that 5:00/km barrier, to see just how much I can push myself. Like I said, it won't be easy. Writing down my intentions here on this blog is one way I am trying to keep myself accountable. We'll see what happens starting this Sunday...

But first, I have a date with the treadmill this afternoon (going for 10km) and another recovery paced run tomorrow (5-8km).

Next up is my re-evaluation of racing goals for the Around the Bay 30k...

Plans Up In The Air - Boston Just Got More Elite

Well, if you haven't already heard then allow me to break the news (ha!). The registration procedure has changed for this year and onwards to allow for the fastest qualifiers to get in first, and the qualifying standards for all age categories will speed up by 5:00 starting with the 2013 running of the Boston Marathon. There are other details that you can read here, but suffice it to say I've already updated my Personal Goals on the sidebar to reflect the more difficult standard.

Now the question is do I shift my training to try for the new standard this Fall, or leave things as they are, go for the current standard (still touch and go for yours truly anyway), and then train for the faster standard at a Spring 2012 marathon?

Crap!!!

And what an appropriately momentous piece of news for this, my 500th post on Running, Wonky Ankle and All!

(Ran twice yesterday, 5km in the morning, 10km on the treadmill at lunch, and then again this morning for a tidy 8.5km. No speed work this week after my faster long run. Legs are a bit stiff.)

Surprisingly Speedy Long Run

This was one of those times that really make you wonder if you can ever accurately predict what's going to happen on your long run. I had so much trouble waking up and dragging myself out of bed. The boys were at a sleepover at my Dad's so we didn't have to set any alarms, which is always nice, but from about 5am on I was tossing and turning, watching the clock, and wondering if I shouldn't just get up and get this run over with.

I didn't manage to get out the door until well past 8:30 in the end in no small part due to the fact that I really didn't know where to run, didn't know if I wanted to run, didn't really think I would have a good run, and wasn't all that inspired to be running at all.

The cold weather we'd been having at least broke a bit and as I set off the thermometer at our house read a little about freezing. This meant that I could wear less stuff and I could wear a baseball hat for the first time in a long time. I told myself to just put one foot in front of the other and tried to not think about running too much. I typically don't listen to music while I run, but on this occasion it was a must. I dialed up Neil Young's "Greendale" on the iPod and off I went.

Right from the start, even though my left ankle was feeling a bit stiff and I wasn't all that energetic, I was running faster than I'd anticipated. My goal was to simply run a solid pace, nothing spectacular, and hold it for the entire twenty-four to twenty-six kilometres. The first split was just that: unspectacular. 5:37/km, 9:03/mile. The second split had me wondering what the Hell was going on: 5:01/km, 8:05/mile. It was too easy to be running at this pace this early in the run.

It would be the last time I'd run any kilometre above 5:00.

For the first ten miles, with Neil in my ears, things went flying by. Bad footing on account of some shoddy sidewalk plowing was not slowing me down very much. The hills that I hit along Eglinton Avenue were also not slowing me down despite the fact that they were definitely not easy to traverse. I didn't start feeling all that tired until well past the ten mile mark. I had been eating Gu Chomps periodically as I carried one package with me and those I'm sure helped. And even though I kept trying to tell myself that slowing down a bit was OK my pace just kept on chugging along faster than any other long run I'd ever done.

I won't lie and say that the last third of the run was just as easy as the first two thirds. It was not! But I managed to keep my focus and kept the pace very steady. As I neared the end of my run, which somewhere in there ended up being twenty-six kilometres or so because I'd decided that I wouldn't be satisfied with anything less, I thought back to my training for the week and decided to try and run far enough to hit 70km for weekly mileage. I don't know what made me misremember (thank you Roger Clemens for that ridiculous non-word), but I thought I'd accumulated 43.8km up until this run. Therefore, after hitting twenty-six km I decided to run two hundred more metres.

And I did, for a total of 26.2km (16.28 miles) in 2:08:16. Average pace was 4:53/km or 7:52/mile.

Then, as I loaded the Garmin data up onto the computer, I noticed my blunder. I had only run 43.6km before this run and so the total for the week would not be a nice round seventy km, but rather a somewhat crooked 69.8km.

Oh well. It's still the fastest long training run of my life. Based on this pace I went through the Half Marathon mark less than 30 seconds slower than my personal best for that distance. That's nuts! And very gratifying.

I think this coming week I will keep up with the mileage, but I will ease up on the speed and tempo stuff. As fun as this run was, and even though it didn't feel any more difficult that your average long run, the pace must have taken some sort of toll and I have to be wary of that.

Redemption

One week after my, admittedly over the top and bit melodramatic, report of failing to meet a goal on a steady state training run I was back at the gym ready to get back on the treadhorse to see if he would once again buck me off. I was feeling a bit sore from the week's activities, in particular the leg weights session that left me a bit more than tender in the glutes and groin areas, and less than adequately prepared from a nutrition perspective.

Last night I did my part to devour a tub of Haagen-Dazs ice cream because the wife, whom I love and adore for just such things, said there simply was no room in the freezer and it would be a shame to have it all go to waste. (Mentioning that it was -15C outside and we could use THAT as our freezer seemed to fall on deaf ears...) She also made me a milkshake to top off the evening of insulin spiking. In short, my stomach was feeling more than a little "off" this morning before I headed out for a chilly 5km recovery run. It wasn't feeling much better as I walked over to the gym, thoughts of impending doom running through my mind...

This week I made sure to at least point one of the big fans in my general direction before getting on the treadmill and I hoped that the cold that had plugged up my airways was also finally licked for good. I punched in the necessary settings such as incline, body weight, duration of the run (which inexplicably cannot be set to anything more than 60 minutes!), and my warm up pace. Then the treadmill began to whirr and I was off.

The gory, or glory, details:

Duration	Speed	Pace (miles)	Pace (km)
5:00	6.7mph	8:57/mile	5:34/km
45:00	8.3mph	7:15/mile	4:30/km
5:00	6.7mph	8:57/mile	5:34/km
55:00	8.0mph	7:29/mile	4:39/km

Yes! I did it! I just ran a full 10k at my 10k race pace in the middle of a training run! I guess that means that my fitness has improved since the Spring of 2009, huh?

It was tough from about the 30 minute mark on, but there was never really any doubt in my mind while I was running that I would finish this time around. Once the timer on the treadmill hit 35:00, which of course included my five minute warm up, and I only had 15 minutes of faster running left I kept myself distracted by just focusing on the individual time goals:

"Just get to 40:00 and then it's easy, only 10 minutes left!"
"Just get to 42:00, that's where I needed one of my breaks last week!"
"Once you hit 45:00 it's just five more minutes and only a little over a kilometre to go!"

You get the picture. The total for the run ended up being 7.34 miles (11.8km). And perhaps more importantly I don't have to type in the word "failure" in capitals, bold, and dark blue all over this post!

Happy Day!

Bitter Cold, Better Treadmill

Today I got to experience both sides of running in a Canadian Winter. First, before the Sun was up and weakly trying to warm our City, I trotted out for an easy 5km at recovery pace. It was -13.5C (7.7F for those that use that freaky scale where something positive can still be positively freezing!) when I left the house, and the wind was definitely adding to the chill factor. Let's just say that I'm glad to have decided to put on that extra fleece jacket...

Then at lunchtime it was back to the great indoors for a bit of speed work on the treadmill. I didn't veer too far from what's been working since last November, but I did push the speed portion of the workout up by a notch to 8.9mph:

Duration	Speed	Pace (miles)	Pace (km)
5:00	6.7mph	8:57/mile	5:34/km
5:00	7.5mph	7:59/mile	4:58/km
5:00	8.9mph	6:44/mile	4:11/km
4:00	7.5mph	7:59/mile	4:58/km
4:00	8.9mph	6:44/mile	4:11/km
3:00	7.5mph	7:59/mile	4:58/km
3:00	8.9mph	6:44/mile	4:11/km
2:00	7.5mph	7:59/mile	4:58/km
2:00	8.9mph	6:44/mile	4:11/km
1:00	7.5mph	7:59/mile	4:58/km
1:00	8.9mph	6:44/mile	4:11/km
5:00	6.7mph	8:57/mile	5:34/km
40:00	7.9mph	7:39/mile	4:45/km

The total ended up being 5.22 miles (8.4km) and it felt a bit easier than similar workouts that I remember doing in the past. Perhaps it was the big fan that I pointed in my direction to cool me off? Who knows. I definitely didn't feel that energetic just before the workout and was yawning up a storm, but sometimes those things don't really come into it and you end up surprising yourself.

Good day of running, both in and out of doors...

Ottawa Weekend

That was a quick weekend! Not running wise (though that went OK in the end), just the amount of time we spent in Ottawa was almost equal to the amount of time it took us to drive there and back!

We left Toronto on Friday night and arrived in Ottawa at midnight with two tired kids. The drive was fine and we didn't hit the usual bottlenecks along the 401, which was nice.

On Saturday morning I got up fairly late (8am or so) and started getting ready to run. Then at the last minute a running partner emerged in the form of my lovely wife and we set off on a nice 5km recovery run along the Canal! I don't have many opportunities to run with her and it's always nice to be able to do so. We watched as the numbers of skaters on the Canal multiplied while we ran and it looked like perfect weather for such activity.

After the run we set off with the boys to skate on the world's largest skating rink and had a great time. The weather was absolutely perfect! Other years we skated while it was totally freezing, but this time we lucked out. It was sunny, just a bit below freezing, and the ice was hard and smooth. Awesome time!

On Sunday morning I set off on my own for my long run. It had snowed a bit overnight and the paths along the Canal were not as bare as the day before. This made sections of the run much tougher to navigate than I'd have liked, but that's how it goes in Canada during the winter I suppose.

My intent was to just run steady and not make this too hard. I've tended recently to run my long runs too fast and I really need to slow down a bit to allow my distances to increase without risking injury or burning out. On that front this was a perfect run. I only hit a couple of lulls where I felt my energy sag, but other than that things were really good. I ate one package of Gu Chomps throughout the run and I'm guessing that helped.

At 18km I bumped into an old friend of mine that I definitely did not expect to see. It was great to see her and we chatted until we both were freezing. She was running in the opposite direction so we didn't even consider running together. Anyway, after that break I finished the last six kilometres for a total of 24km, my longest training run since before the marathon last September! Even though I was consciously trying to slow down I still managed to run at a decent pace in the end (5:07/km, or 8:14/mile). It also marks the highest weekly mileage in a long time at 67.15km (a little over 42 miles).

A great way to finish off a week of running. Now I'm ready to start another.

Trying Is The First Step Towards Failure

Boy, that hurt. And if I was evaluating myself strictly then I would have to say that on my last run I FAILED. And let it be known that I always evaluate myself strictly.

But let's backtrack a little...

Yesterday was a non-running day and so I hit the gym for my usual Thursday leg weights session. My legs were feeling surprisingly stiff after doing deep squats on Monday (after a break of two full weeks for that exercise due to the cold virus that put me out for several days last week), but I made it through my usual routine with my regular weights and actually felt better after the workout then before.

This morning I got up for a recovery paced 5km around the neighbourhood and it was uneventful, which is a good thing.

Then came my lunch time attempt at a steady state run of 45 minutes on the old treadmill. Let the failure begin. Prose doesn't do it justice. Neither does a crappy HTML table, but I'm lazy, my legs are quickly tightening up like cheap banjo strings, and I remain a big fan of cut'n'paste:

Duration	Speed	Pace (miles)	Pace (km)
5:00	6.7mph	8:57/mile	5:34/km
28:00	8.3mph	7:15/mile	4:30/km
1:00	0mph	infinity/mile	infinity/km
4:00	8.3mph	7:15/mile	4:30/km
1:00	0mph	infinity/mile	infinity/km
5:00	8.3mph	7:15/mile	4:30/km
1:00	0mph	infinity/mile	infinity/km
4:00	8.3mph	7:15/mile	4:30/km
1:00	0mph	infinity/mile	infinity/km
4:00	8.3mph	7:15/mile	4:30/km
1:00	0mph	infinity/mile	infinity/km
5:00	6.2mph	9:39/mile	6:00/km
55:00	8.0mph	7:29/mile	4:39/km

I tried, I really really tried, to not stop, but I was totally overheating and the gunk remnants of cold goo that was stuck at the back of my throat made breathing really difficult, especially when my heart rate went up over 170bpm. Had I been outdoors I'd have let one fly to try and clear my air passage, but being indoors on the treadmill I thought that would just have been too gross and disrespectful to my fellow gym people, sweaty and gross as they are. So I ended having to take not one, but 4 disgusting breaks during my supposed "steady state" run attempt, and another at the end before beginning my cool down.

Had I been successful I would have done my 10k PR pace in a training run! Instead, I cannot call it that. I call it FAILURE.

That being said at least I DID run for a full 45 minutes at the desired pace. Now if I can just do it without stopping...

The total for the run was 11.75km (7.30 miles). And yes, in case you are wondering, I did have the sweet/bitter taste of lactic acid on my tongue after the run. I pushed past lactate threshold and paid the price. Paid the price for trying. The cost, clearly, was FAILURE.

Unfortunately there are no refunds for FAILURE. But there's always another day...

Another day when one can give it another TRY.

You Call This A Storm?

I can't believe they cancelled schools for this... I was expecting something much more debilitating. As a result I did not set my alarm to wake me up for my regular before breakfast run. Instead I got to "sleep in" until 6:30am, NOT use my bike for the first time since I can't recall to get to work, brave the public transit "system" and be late for my doctor's appointment, and then uber late for work (though had none of those things not happened I would not have run into an old friend that I haven't seen in many years, so I guess it was meant to be).

Anyway, instead of sloshing through the snow I took my run inside and ran the exact same thing that I did last Friday. Amazing how it worked out to the exact same time and distance. If you can't give them nothing else, you have to admit that those treadmills are at least consistent. As you can see from my office window view this is not exactly a blizzard, but I suspect I would have been slipping and sliding all over the place had I taken my run outside.

In any case, 8.05km (5 miles) done. First five minutes at 6.7mph (5:34/km) and the rest at 7.6mph (4:54/km), all at 1% incline and it took exactly 40:04 to complete. Tried to distract myself from the boredom by watching original Star Trek, but was unsuccessful partly because I didn't have any headphones and partly because reading the dialog made it seem even more cheesy. Captain Kirk's funny way of emphasizing certain words does not come across on closed captioning, in case you're wondering.

Has It Been That Long?

Only after running this afternoon on the treadmill did I realize how long it has been since I did one of these workouts! What happened? Well, I guess time just slips away. I've tried something else for speed intervals and suffered a minor calf injury as a result. Then I got sick. The weeks passed by...

But let's back it up. As Toronto is bracing for a major snow storm that is already hitting much of the USA I was able to get up early and fit in my usual 5km at recovery pace. My right calf was not an issue, and to be perfectly honest I was shocked.

As my lunchtime treadmill session neared I had no idea how the calf would hold up or what type of workout I should do. The training plan called for some "speed", and although I know that term is relative I typically push myself a bit harder on these than normal. On the walk over to the gym I made a decision that I would try something that had been working for me and if the calf started to give me trouble just turn it into another easy run or stop altogether.

No trouble from the calf as I repeated a workout that I hadn't done since January 4th! (Incidentally, that post was all about how I had not yet made any concrete goals for 2011, and I'm sorry to report that everything remains the same...)

Duration	Speed	Pace (miles)	Pace (km)
5:00	6.7mph	8:57/mile	5:34/km
5:00	7.5mph	7:59/mile	4:58/km
5:00	8.8mph	6:49/mile	4:14/km
4:00	7.5mph	7:59/mile	4:58/km
4:00	8.8mph	6:49/mile	4:14/km
3:00	7.5mph	7:59/mile	4:58/km
3:00	8.8mph	6:49/mile	4:14/km
2:00	7.5mph	7:59/mile	4:58/km
2:00	8.8mph	6:49/mile	4:14/km
1:00	7.5mph	7:59/mile	4:58/km
1:00	8.8mph	6:49/mile	4:14/km
4:59	6.7mph	8:57/mile	5:34/km
39:59	7.8mph	7:43/mile	4:48/km

In all I ran 5.19 miles (8.35km) and stopped the treadmill one second early of the desired 40 minutes, but it all doesn't matter. February is off to a good start!

Now bring on the snow...