Of Mice and Marathons

Off.

I took the boys to the park for a little while in the morning and we went to the pool at Great Lakes Athletic Club. We `had a good time other thn a few meltdowns here and there, but the boys enjoyed the pool. 

PM/Evening: 10 miles on the treadmill, averaged 8:49. HR 132. Did some strides.

AM: 10.2 miles on the treadmill, averaged 7:54. HR 152.

10'-6'-10'

I was supposed to do another 6' interval but I got 1' in and called it. Just lost concentration and confidence. Maybe could have started a little slower, but even with a lot of treadmill running lately anything faster than steady aerobic to marathon effort is a bit hard to dial in. I should have known to start at 9.0 and work my way down. That would have been doable and just about right. 10' intervals were at 9.3 and the 6' was at 9.4. I didn't take laps for the intervals so I don't have an exact HR but it was getting to around 177-180 BPM on the last one. Sometimes I can grind at that effort, other times I just cannot hold the concentration (usually not a legs or lungs problem). 

PM: 121' on the trainer. 227W. HR 130.

AM: 11.1 miles on the treadmill, averaged 8:11. HR 141. 

PM: 2 hours 17' on the fat bike. 197W. HR 131. 

I figured the roads would be a mess after all the rain we got so I decided not to do Thursday Night Dirt so Megan could work out on campus. Roads were apparently fine, so I headed out for a bit over 2 hours solo. Roads were damp, but in much better shape than I thought they might be. 

Picked my gravel bike up from the shop, but I needed to bed in the brakes. 

PM: 2 hours 53' (51.3 miles @ 17.8 MPH). 214W. HR 145.

75' Tempo @ High Tempo/SS (269W/277 Normalized HR 163 19.9 MPH)

Looked like crazy storms coming through, but I managed to avoid them by riding in the other direction. Part of the Polly Ann was closed for maintenance, which was actually a good thing as that put me in the right direction to avoid the storm I think. 

Warmed up 45' and then just gave it an effort. I was trying to maintain the same power as past Friday on the trainer, but that is much harder to do outside with turns and downhills and the like. This was definitely more race specific and you attack the roads with a little less caution than you sometimes do at endurance effort. 

Pretty please with the effort, as it suggest I can do at least this power for a 90' race effort and that for races of 30-36 miles, I really should be able to put out 270-285 watts. 162 HR seemed very manageable for a good deal longer. Short distance race HR should likely be high 160s to low 170s I think. 

Easy cool down to make it just under 3 hours. This was supposed to be a big block week for Watermoo the first part of August, but I don't think it will be that. This was still a good session though. I will try next week to extend it out to 90' or so and try to maintain a slightly higher power. 

Off.

Felt ready to get a longer ride in, but then felt overcaffeinated and anxious and then I felt like I had low blood sugar to the point were I was just staring at the boys on the couch and my speech was affected. I thought something might have been really wrong with me as I had eaten and tried to eat more to make sure low blood sugar wasn't the problem. 

I took a long nap and felt somewhat better but not well enough to do any sort of exercise. Megan took the boys to Bald Mountain. I fell asleep on the couch for another 45 minutes to an hour and felt a good deal better after that finally.