Same Time, Same Channel

V0₂ max - 9 miles w/ 6 x 600 m @ 5K race pace (7:11 target pace), jog 50 to 90% interval time between.

7:21 am, 46°F, 60% humidity, wind 3 S.

My kids don't have school today or tomorrow for reasons that are unfathomable to me, though I suspect it's a comp day and then a professional development day for the teachers. I have absolutely no discipline regarding getting to bed on time and getting up on time when I don't have to get my kids off to school. So I stayed up way too late last night and then slept in this morning.

I really didn't feel like running when I got up, but I was okay once I got out the door. It was really a beautiful morning and it turned in to a pretty good run.

I ran a little over 4 miles and then was going to go to the high school track. I have always used the middle school track in the past because it is easier to get to. But my son says that the high school track is a real track surface, while the middle school track is asphalt. So I was heading to the high school track, but I could see that there was a team of some sort, I think it might have been lacrosse, practicing on the infield. I didn't want to run my workout with a bunch of high school boys watching, so I continued on to the middle school track. That's no problem because the high school and the middle school are right next to each other. Maybe I'll try to go to the high school track next time I have a track workout if I'm out earlier in the morning.

I kept my rest intervals on the V0₂ max repeats pretty short. The 600 meters took me about 2 minutes and 45 seconds, or a little less on the later ones, and my rest intervals were about 1 minute and 20 seconds, so close to the 50% time, rather than 90%.

Here are my stats:

Splits before the intervals: 9:53, 9:44, 9:32, 9:25, 0.82 @ 9:33.
Pace on the 600 m intervals: 7:14, 7:14, 7:07, 7:00, 6:59
Splits after the intervals: 9:45, 9:19, 0.16 @ 9:13

I was arithmetically challenged when I finished the intervals. I looked at my total distance and saw 7.38, or something like that, and did a rough subtraction in my head to see how much further I needed to run to get 9 miles total. Somehow, I came up with a little over 2 and a half miles instead of a little over 1 and a half miles. So I was going along and after a  little more than a mile and a half  I was thinking about what route to take in order to end up at home in a mile and I looked down at my watch and the total time said just over 9 miles. So then I realized my mistake. At that point, the shortest route home was a half a mile, so I ended up running 9.5 miles total instead of 9.

Today I bring you the penultimate proprioceptive cue from Brain Training for Runners by Matt Fitzgerald. It is "Axle Between the Knees:"

"Imagine there is an axle, dowel, post, or something else of the sort that is positioned between your knees and pushes your knees half an inch farther apart than they would normally be while you run. This proprioceptive cue helps you engage the hip flexors and hip external rotators and prevent interval rotation of the thigh—a common cause of injuries."

I thought about this cue some while I was running before I got to the track, I didn't really think about it much while I was at the track, but then I thought about it a lot while I was running home from the track because it gave some relief to the chafing of my thunderous thighs that had developed during the track running. I think I need some longer/better shorts.

Medium-long run.

6:59 am, 47° F, 69% humidity, wind 6 SSW. It was sunny and beautiful for the first part of my run and then it got very overcast and gloomy.

I played hooky from the sub-6 club again today. I actually got to bed on time (but not early) last night, but then I couldn't make myself get up since I didn't absolutely have to. I actually did a little bit of work before I went out on my run.

I ran my home/work loop, which kicked my butt last Thursday. I don't mind those hills when I don't have to hit a certain pace, but I don't think I'll ever try to run that route as a tempo run again. I made a pit/water stop at Walgreens at about the end of mile 6. No matter which of my routes I run around here, there's always one or more Walgreens on my route. There are four different ones that I pass regularly when I'm running, but not all of them in the same run (often 3 in one run though). Actually, I passed three today, but not the same three as usual.

It seems as if the approach during this mesocycle is to do a day of speedwork followed by a medium-long or long run so that you are fatigued for the long run. This pairing occurs several times in this mesocycle, the first occurrence being yesterday and today.

AP: 9:21. Splits: 10:09, 9:35, 9:27, 9:17, 9:31, 9:24, 9:26, 9:19, 9:06, 9:00, 8:54, 9:18, 9:14, 9:17.

Run #1. Recovery + 6 x 100 m strides.

6:12 am, 43° F, 89% humidity, winds calm, overcast.

My oldest son and his string bass had to be to school at 6:00 to go to an orchestra competition and the second son had to be to seminary at 6:30, then the third son leaves for school at about 7:05 or 7:10, at which point the girl is the only kid at home. I didn't want to get up early enough to be finished with my run in time for the 6:00 drive to school, so I got up and got dressed for running (and ironed a tux shirt for my son), did that drive, and then ran. This necessitated the second son walking to seminary, and the girl was left alone for just a few minutes between the time the third son left and the time I got home.

My overall distance was supposed to be 6 miles, but I ended up going a little long because I took a detour from a certain point to Michelle's house and back to measure the distance for her. I used the lap button to measure the distance, and so I don't have even mile splits recorded. I'll just say that my average pace was 9:58, and the pace on my strides was 7:20, 7:02, 7:19, 6:54, 7:17, 7:22.

Run #2. Recovery.

2:22 pm, 61°F, 52% humidity, wind 9 N, mostly cloudy.

I ran a 4 mile loop around the business park that my office is in. I felt really sluggish. It is really easy for me to run slowly on recovery runs because I'm always tired from my faster and/or longer runs that I do on other days.

It looks like I just missed the rain. It might have been fun to run in the rain. Or maybe not. If the forecast is right, I might have the chance to run in the rain later this week.

AP: 10:18. Splits: 10:37, 10:29, 9:59, 10:08.

Recovery run.

5:13 am, 44° F, 87% humidity, winds calm, light mist followed by light rain.

Well, this was my first sub-6 am run since April 15. I'm having to get back into the sub-6 club for the next several weeks, though I would prefer not to, as cool as it is.

The flip side of this two-hard-day-in-a-row pattern that I've got for the next few weeks is that I've also got two recovery days in a row, such as yesterday and today. I need to be well rested up for Friday and Saturday this week. I'm a little anxious about doing a tempo run tomorrow after my crash and burn on my tempo run last week. Tomorrow's actually supposed to be a tune-up race, but there's no race to go to, so I'm going to do a tempo run instead.

The ground was wet when I went outside this morning, but it wasn't raining. However, there was a light mist in the air, enough to make my glasses wet. Around the end of the 4th mile, I realized that it was raining lightly. That continued for the rest of my run, but had stopped by the time I drove to seminary shortly thereafter. I was pretty wet, but not soaked, by the time I finished the run.

AP: 10:16. Splits: 10:41, 10:22, 10:14, 10:11, 9:52.

Another attempted tempo run.

5:03 am, 38-35° F, 92% humidity, winds 11 NNW, steady rain changing to snow.

That was beyond miserable. I knew I was in trouble when I woke up and I could hear the weather. I know that Snoqualmie runs in rain all the time, but I'm not used to it and I don't have good rain gear. I don't have rain gear at all.

My training plan said an 8K-15K tune-up race for a total of 9-13 miles. Not having a race to go to,  I planned to do 3 miles warmup, then an 8 mile tempo run, then 2 miles cooldown, for a total of 13. I managed the 3 miles warmup, then 6 miles at a hard effort (not quite my tempo pace), and then I cut my losses and ran slower home for 0.64 miles. I might have been able to stick with the original plan if I hadn't been soaked to the skin and freezing to death. I'm still shaking so hard I can hardly type even though I put on dry clothes. And there is a pile of seriously soaked clothes on my bathroom floor. I would take a hot shower right now, but I think my boys just used all the hot water. Since I did manage more than 8K at a hard effort and more than 9 miles, I think I'll call it good.

Rain unties shoes. I've never had my shoes come untied while running before, but they came untied several times this morning, and by the end my fingers were too numb to tie them well and I ended up running home with one shoe untied.

Besides stopping several times to tie my shoes, I had to stop for several minutes at one point to try to straighten out things at home. I was unable to drive to seminary today, so I told my son to walk, but if it was raining, to wake up his older brother and have his older brother drive him. I also warned the older brother last night that he might be called upon to drive to seminary. At about 6:15 I got a text from seminary son saying he wouldn't be able to wake up his brother and so he wasn't going to seminary. So I stopped and stood there in the rain and called older son's cell phone twice. No answer. I called seminary son's cell phone twice. No answer. I called the home phone twice. Seminary son answered the second call. I asked him if he had even tried to wake up his brother and he said no. So I told him to do that. I guess it all worked out, because older son did drive seminary son to seminary.

I'm afraid the weather's not going to be any better tomorrow.

AP: 8:55. Splits: 10:09, 10:14, 10:08, 8:08, 8:38, 8:21, 8:08, 8:02, 8:13, 0.64 @ 9:11.

Long run.

10:24 am, 38-46°F, 84-66% humidity, winds 7 NNW, very overcast with mist to begin, light rain for a few minutes around mile 8, and then partly cloudy with some sun by the end.

Thus ends week 1 of mesocycle 3. I really wanted to do 13 miles yesterday so that I would have 70 for the week with my scheduled 18 today, but I didn't manage it. I thought about going out yesterday afternoon for the 3.36 that I missed, but I took a nap instead. So I added the 3.36 to today's run. I was supposed to have 70 miles last week and didn't make it, so I wanted to get 70 miles this week. Also, I missed a scheduled 20 miler back in March on the day that I ran the Canyonlands Half Marathon, so I thought it would be nice to get another 20+ miler done.

However, I bailed on Michelle this morning. I was supposed to meet her at her house at 7:30 as long as it wasn't raining or snowing. I got up at 6:30 and it was cold, in the low 30s, and it didn't look like it was raining too much, but I did see a person out walking a dog carrying an umbrella (the person was carrying the umbrella, not the dog). I really didn't want to be cold and wet for 3 1/2 hours, so I went back to bed and figured I'd run later when the weather was a little better. I didn't call Michelle because I thought she would still be asleep. I was going to call her at about 7:15, but I fell asleep. She called me at 7:40 wondering where I was. So I wasn't a very good friend this morning. I didn't really have great weather when I started out, but it got better by the end of my run.

I decided to circumnavigate Highlands Ranch today instead of running a shortly loop repeatedly. I passed 3 different high schools and 4 Walgreen's one of them twice, on this run. I kind of combined three different routes that I normally do, which meant that in addition to have the hills at the beginning that I often have, I had the hills going up Highlands Ranch parkway in the 2nd half, not quite at the end. I'm glad to finally be done.

AP: 9:32. Splits: 10:13, 9:40, 9:28, 9:21, 9:39, 9:17, 9:43, 9:08, 9:14, 9:02, 9:12, 9:16, 9:32, 9:34, 9:44, 9:32, 9:43, 9;26, 9:47, 10:07, 9:33, 0.36 @ 9:22.