dedication, perseverance, self-discipline

Total time of 67:00

TLDR:  6 reps run fartlek style (not timed) but all likely no more than 60 seconds in length.  Recovery was whatever felt good and lined up well with the terrain.

Full Version:  I have felt somewhat tired the last few days, but I still wanted to run a speed workout today.  The plan was to run some shorter reps, so I still did that as planned but I did not time the reps or the recovery in an effort to keep the workout a little easier.  It was also 5 degrees during the run this morning while my phone said that it "felt like" -4 so I was even more motivated to not track splits as doing so would require removing my hands from inside my coat sleeves.

I ended up starting the first rep close to 3 miles into the run, running a total of 6 reps.  I kept the intensity fairly high and would run until I started to feel like the pace was getting uncomfortable, and then try to maintain that pace for just a little longer.  The recovery was also untimed, and I would just run easy until I felt fully recovered and ready to run another rep.  I am guessing that recovery averaged anywhere from 1-3 minutes per rep.  After finishing all of the reps I ran back to the house to use the bathroom, arriving around the 53:40 mark of the run, and following my bathroom break I went back out to finish the last 13+ minutes of the run.

Total time of 70:00

TLDR:  I ran a short tempo for approximately 8:50 starting around the 49:00 mark.

Full Version:  I have been feeling tired lately.  Not so tired that I don't feel like I can run, but tired enough that I haven't really felt comfortable running speed workouts.  We did have some illness go through our house just after new years, and I ended up taking last Thursday off from running as a preventative measure despite not really feeling super sick.  Even after taking the day off I have still felt off physically, more tired than normal, and I have slowed my runs down to compensate and scrapped any speed workouts.

I have been pleased that despite the recent fatigue I have still been able to maintain, and increase, the time I spend on my feet during my runs as I have run for 70 minutes every day this week in what has likely been my highest mileage week since 2013 (except I have not been counting miles, so I don't really know for certain).  This is a victory of sorts for me as when I felt similar fatigue during the fall of 2017 while running around 40 mpw (averaged about 54 min per day on average) I stopped running completely.  While I only ran at a tempo effort for around 8:50 during today's run I will again count this as a victory, as going into the run I had not planned to run faster during any portion of the run, while doing so did not leave me feeling overly fatigued for the rest of the afternoon.

I ran out of Alpine, crossing Timp Highway and eventually dropped onto the Murdock canal trail near Lone Peak High School.  I turned around at 35:32 expecting that I would naturally run faster on the way back.  What I did not realize was that I had a tail wind during the first half of my run in addition to the gradual downhill slope coming out of Alpine, and I slowed down as I started to run back towards home.  I turned off the trail onto North County Blvd at about the 49:00 mark of the run and decided that I needed to speed up in order to make it back home in less than 70:00 (It took me close to 23:00 to reach the same point during the first half of the run) so I started a short tempo (with stops for stoplights and to pick up a picture of Jesus that I did not feel comfortable leaving on the ground), maintaining a faster but controlled effort until I reached the top of the hill shortly after entering Alpine city limits in approximately 57:50.  I then slowed back down and finished running home, arriving in 69:36, adding a little extra to reach 70:00 for the run.

Total time of 1:15 for today's run (and the rest of this week).  Ran down to the Timpanogos Temple.

No speed work or anything special at all this week other than an occasional pick-up as it has been pretty snowy this week.  I have also had a lot of late nights with work calls as we are working with a company in India to get our web app UI developed.  The late calls coupled with early morning runs (waking up just after 5:30 most days this week) and snow have led me to just enjoy the time on my feet this week rather than trying to run at a specific pace, or perform specific workouts.

Last week was similar in regards to snow and late night phone calls, although I didn't have to wake up as early.  I did run a short speed workout once last week with 6 x 20-30ish second sprints and 5-6 minute running recovery, and a mini tempo run last Friday which I ran off the cuff due to seeing some other runners up ahead of me.  Last week I ran 1:12:00 every day except once when I ran less than a minute longer.

Total time of 1:15:00

TLDR:  15 min tempo, 5 min tempo, 20 second sprint running away from a dog

Full Version:  I haven't done a true hard workout in weeks as I have either felt run down, or the weather has been uncooperative.  As the streets were much clearer today and I was feeling good, I decided to run my first hard workout in a while.  As can happen on occasion, my mind was a little ahead of my fitness and the initial plan was to run 2 x 15 min hard.  Before I even started the first rep I started to rethink this plan and ended up deciding to change things, although I didn't solidify the new plan for my workout until I was already 9 minutes into the 15 minute rep.

After finishing the first rep I ran more slowly for 20 minutes before running the 5 minute tempo, finishing it at the 60 minute mark of the run.  My legs felt pretty tired both during the 5 minute rep, as well as during the last 5 minutes of the 15 minute rep.  I ran most of today's run on the same route that I ran on yesterday (up to the 70:00 mark of that run) and at the mark where I finally broke off in a different direction I was a little over 7:00 ahead of my pace from yesterday.  I had a little extra time left in the run as I arrived back at the house, so I ran down Main Street and back for a few minutes until I arrived back at the house at 1:15:00.

Total time of 1:18:00.

TLDR:  6 x 2 min hard, 3 min easy

Full Version:  I have been feeling better recently, so decided that today would be a good day to run another speed workout.  I didn't want to put in a large amount of speed work, but I wanted to put in more work than I have recently (most speed work in non-tempo workouts recently has totalled about 2:30 in total, so not much).  I decided to run 6 x 2 min hard, 3 min easy.  I started the first rep at the 30:00 mark of the run and finished the final rep at the 57:00 mark before running back to the house and finishing my run at 1:18:00.

The reps went as follows:  1st, gradual-moderate uphill for the entirety; 2nd, steep uphill at beginning and end with a short downhill stretch in the middle.  Overall net uphill; 3rd, either flat or mild uphill for first 1:20 with moderate-steep downhill for the last 0:40.  Likely a net downhill; 4th, moderate-steep downhill for the first 1:00, with mild uphill or flat for the last 1:00.  Net downhill; 5th, moderate-steep uphill for the entirety of the rep; 6th, gradual downhill or flat for the first 1:00, followed by uncomfortably steep downhill for the last 1:00.

Total time of 1:18:00 for about 11.15 miles acccording to the course tool.

TLDR:  2 x 10 min hard, with 2 min recovery between the repetitions.

Full Version:  I wanted to put in about the same amount of faster running today as I did last Saturday, but I decided to even things up a little more.  Starting at the 34 minute mark I began a 10 minute tempo, turning around at the 40 minute mark.  I was on the Murdock canal trail, so it was mostly flat, but there was a very slight downhill grade with a tailwind (before I left the forecast said 11-12 mph) from 34-40 min, and a very slight uphill grade with a headwind from 40-44.  I caught approximate splits at a couple quarter mile markers, timing myself at 88-90 (or was it 92?) seconds per quarter between the 40-44 minute mark of the run.

From 44-46 minutes I recovered before starting the second 10 minute tempo.  I caught an additional split at 46:58, having split the half mile which included the 2 minute recovery in 3:34, followed by a final quarter in 91 during which the wind felt like it was a little stronger.  Shortly after this point I turned off the canal trail and started running back up towards Alpine for the last 5:19 of the tempo.  I was running with a more definite uphill grade for the rest of the run, but I had a tailwind and I actually felt like it was easier to run fast than when I was on flatter ground on the canal trail.  I finished the final 10 minute tempo at the 56:00 mark, and crossed Timp Highway just before 61:00.

I was on track to make it back to the house by 1:18:00, but I was feeling tired and I slowed down after crossing Timp Highway.  As a result I hit the 1 mile to go mark in 1:10:40, and I decided to speed up in order to make it home in the desired time.  I then ran the next half mile in 3:14.  I will guess that I was running most of this half mile right around 6:00 pace, but I didn't speed up immediately, and I started to slow down before I hit the half mile mark.  I then ran the last half mile in 3:51 to make it back to the house in 1:17:45, before adding a little more time to finish in 1:18:00.  I will guess that The total hard work added up to about 3.8 miles when counting the half mile where I sped up near the end.

Total time of 47:00

I ran 80 minutes a day the first few days of the week.  I realized part way into my run today that I am sick as I almost threw up while running and had to stop at a bathroom with the runs.  I ended up cutting my run short as a result.

I then did not run on Friday or Saturday due to the illness.

No run today as I had to wake up at 4:00am to catch a flight out to LA and worked for the rest of the day until about 10:00pm

Total time of 1:20:00

TLDR:  8 loops of varying distance around MacArthur park in LA, running 4 loops hard in 4:17, 4:13, 4:17, 4:15.

Full Version:  I ran a speed workout in the park today.  It wasn't the fastest loop as there was some mild rolling hills in the park (I skipped the steep hills for the fast loops) and some sharp turns that resulted in near stops in order to navigate them.  I alternated fast and slow loops, running a slightly longer loop for the recovery which took between 7:00-7:30 for the most part.  I ran the shorter loop as a recovery once in order to see how much slower I was compared to the fast loops and I completed the loop in 6:20, so a little over 2:00 slower than when I was running hard.  I also ran too and from the park, which took about 17:00 each way.  On the way back from the park my calves were bothering me some on both the left and right sides as the intensity of the speed work took more out of me than I expected it to.

I measured the loop that I ran for the fast reps on the courese tool and it is approximately 0.8 miles long, so my average pace for those reps was between 5:16-5:21.  I am happy with this as I thought I was running more slowly, and the sharp turns led to a fair amount of slowing down/speeding up which made running fast hard. 

Total time of 1:25:00 for approximately 11 miles (maybe a little more as I ran the same course that I ran a couple Saturdays ago, and estimated using the course tool at 11.15, but I turned around maybe 15 seconds earlier).

I ran easy for most of the run but sped up for 1 mile which I ran in 6:24 (1:49, 1:37, 1:33, 1:25).  The first part of this mile felt pretty easy.  I didn't really feel like I was working at all until the last quarter, but I will count the last 0.75 as marathon pace.

Total time of 1:21:00

I ran easy for most of the run, but I ran 2 x 0.5 mile faster during the middle of the run.  Goal pace was 6:00/mile for these (3:00) as I didn't really want to run hard, I just wanted to pick up the pace a little.  I ended up running them in 2:53, 2:54.  I ran the second half of the run a little slower than the first because I was running uphill for the most part on the way back home and I made a conscious decision to not work harder in order to get home by the 1:20:00 mark.

Total time of 1:20:00

This morning I ran 2 x 1 "mile" (in quotes because the distance was estimated) in 5:49, and 5:46.  My best guess is that the first mile was just a little long, and the second was a little short of actually being a mile.  During the second mile my legs did not feel like they were working very hard, but my breathing felt labored.  I'm not quite sure what was wrong, but I wondered if it could have been related to poor air quality.

Total time of 1:30:00.

During the second half of the run I ran two tempos, with the first being approximately 2 miles in length, and the second being a little over 1.5 miles.  I am finally starting to implement a long run into my weekly mileage.  My achilles has been sore, and my calves have been tight, so I have needed to be careful lately, but I felt good enough to run some faster mileage so I did.

I ran from home past Lone Peak High School and onto the trails nearby.  I turned around at 45:02 and immediately started my first tempo.  During the second mile I timed three quarters on the Murdock Canal Trail in 87, 86, 84 after hitting an approximate mile mark in 5:56 (mile markers were missing near where I started the tempo, so distance is approximate), while I estimated that I ran the last quarter in 85.  Total time for this tempo was 11:38.

I started the second tempo as I reached the top of a hill just after entering back into Alpine.  I have previously measured parts of this area on the course tool, so I estimated from this location I was a little over 1.5 miles from home, with known locations for the 1.0 and 0.5 mile markers from the house.  I ran the first 0.5+ miles in 2:58 (I measured it after the fact on the course tool at 0.54 miles with 67 ft elevation loss), running most of this section on downhill or flat terrain.  The second 0.5 mile was also run in 2:58, but has a gradual uphill grade for its entirety (net gain of 27 ft).  The last 0.5 miles have a steeper uphill grade (net gain of 71 ft), and while I felt like my effort was similar or maybe even harder, I only ran a 3:08 for the final 0.5 miles (9:04 total time for the tempo).

I arrived at the house at the 1:25:02 mark of the run, and then turned around to run extra and finish with a total time of 1:30:00.

Total time of 1:22:00

This week I am increasing my daily running time again (by a whole 2 minutes!).  I plan on slowly increasing my daily running time every couple weeks until I am running 1:30:00 per day with a long run on Saturday.

For today I wanted to run a little speed work, with the key word being little.  I ended up running a workout where I ran 6-3-1 minutes hard with about 18.5 min between the first and second reps, and about 11.5 min between the second and third reps.  This wasn't ideal in terms of trying to produce a stimulus to improve fitness, but I believe that it was better than nothing.  I felt pretty good during the 6 and 3 minute reps, but I probably ran the 1 minute rep too hard and my legs felt pretty tired for the last 25 minutes of the run.

Total time of 1:35:00.  I know that I ran over 12 miles, just not sure by how much.

TLDR:  1.25 miles in 8:00 during the first half, and 2 miles in 11:42 during the second half.

Full Version:  I ran South until I hit the Murdock canal trail and started running West on the trail.  I had to use the bathroom, and knowing that the closest bathroom was a fair way down the trail I decided to speed up in order to decrease the amount of time spent running with stomach cramps.  I timed 1.25 miles on the trail in 8:00 (1:37, 1:35, 1:32, 1:41, 1:35).  This didn't feel particularly hard, and would have been faster except I had to slow down during the fourth quarter due to stomach cramps.  After using the bathroom I continued down the trail until I hit 47:30 on my watch at which point I turned around to head back home.

I started a 2 mile tempo about 30 second after turning around.  The first quarter had a lot of steep uphill in it (1:36), followed by a flat second quarter (1:26), and a third quarter that was probably net downhill with a downhill beginning and uphill finish (1:23).  The fourth quarter started uphill before flattening out eventually (1:30), followed by mostly flat fifth and sixth quarters (1:26, 1:26), and what felt like a very mild uphill for the last two quarters (1:29, 1:26), and a total time of 11:42 (5:55, 5:47).  Edit:  I checked the elevation change on the course tool, and I had an estimated net gain of 49 ft for the 2 miles, 43 ft during the first mile, and 6 ft during the second mile.  The timed 1.25 mile stretch on the way out which coincided with the last 1.25 miles of the second half's tempo had a net loss of 19 ft.

I then finished the run running back up to the house and arriving in 1:34:48 and jogging a circle around the round about to finish off my run in 1:35:00.  I felt stiff after finishing the tempo run, which has been a consistent theme for me lately, and the last 4+ miles were pretty slow (over 8:00 pace).  I'm not sure what the problem is, I just know that I have frequently felt stiff lately, especially if I have been sitting/lying down, and at the beginning of my runs (less frequently at the end of my run as happened today).  Depending on how I feel next week I may take an easy week where I only run 60ish minutes per day (plus my planned "long" run of 1:40:00 as I don't want to cut that short) instead of the planned 82 minutes per day.

Total time of 1:40:00

TLDR:  2+ mile tempo in 12:35.  I hit the 2 mile mark at 11:33.

Full Version:  After considering last week to drop down my running time this week I ended up running the full distance that I had originally planned, but I skipped out on speed workouts until today and just ran 1:22:00 easy every day from Monday through Friday.  I was also planning on running easy today, but as the run progressed I ended up deciding to run a tempo after I turned around just after 50:00.

I started off the run at a slow pace but then fairly quickly sped up to where I was running somewhere in the 7:20-7:40 range which progressively got faster until I was running close to 7:00 pace, which I averaged for a stretch of almost 3 miles that I measured on the canal trail until I turned around.  I hit the turn around at 50:07 and then immediately started a 2+ mile tempo.  I started off a little slow on the tempo, only running my first quarter in 93 seconds, but after that I sped up and every quarter thereafter was assumed to have been under 90 seconds (some markers were missing, so I don't have split times for most quarters).  I hit the 2 mile mark of the tempo at 11:33, but continued for a little longer as I wanted to time a half mile segment that was marked on the trail, and I finished the tempo in 12:35 (I must have looked at my watch wrong because I timed the last 0.5 in 2:43, which was maybe a 2:53 instead assuming that I misread my watch, thinking that it read xx:59 instead of xx:49?).

I then finished the run, running back home and arriving less than a minute before my watch hit 1:40:00, and running back and forth in the driveway until I finished. 

I ran 1:24:00 on both Monday and Tuesday of this week.  I think that I got food poisoning from something and I had very runny bowels on Wednesday and today.  Since my achilles has still been feeling off (sometimes painful, but mostly just stiff), and in general I have been feeling tired I decided to scale back my workouts a lot in order to try and let the achilles recover, get over the food poisoning, and try to eliminate the fatigue.  As a result, I only ran for about 10 minutes yesterday, and today I only ran for about 30 minutes.  I felt like today's run was pain free, which was nice.

I am trying different things to see what helps with the fatigue.  I am going to try to see if I can adjust my bedtime routine to make my sleep more restful (I don't think this is really a problem per se, but I figure it can't hurt).  I am also going to try to up my water intake, and I am looking into trying out some supplements as I wonder if I have some sort of vitamin deficiency.

I haven't posted in a while so I wanted to post an update on where my fitness is at.  I have struggled a lot recently with feeling tired and stiff, while my achilles and/or calf have been consistently tight and sometimes painful.  I experienced symptoms similar to achilles tendonitis, but I didn't feel like I had done anything specific that would have caused a condition like this under normal circumstances.  I have come to the belief that I was probably experiencing some sort of nutritional deficiency, and I have been taking supplements to try and rectify the situation.  Recently I have also started trying to decrease tightness in my calves/hamstrings through some minor stretching and massage which appears to be helping to decrease the strain on my calves/achilles.

I have been running reduced mileage for approximately two months now, generally running no more than about 40 minutes per day.  I have slowly been feeling less fatigued and more recently my achilles has felt like it has started to improve.  Today I ran approximately 5.5 miles, running the first 4.5 by myself in about 30 minutes, and the last mile with Olivia averaging between 9:00-11:00 pace (about 4:35 for the first approx. half mile, and close to 11:00 pace for most of the second half mile until I stopped to talk with a neighbor before running home at a faster pace).

As a test during my run today I started off a little quicker than normal, and I hit the mile mark in 7:12.  I naturally continued to speed up, and when I noticed that I was running fairly quickly I decided to maintain the effort until I turned around.  I turned around at approximately 15:02 (2.24 miles according to the course tool, so 6:19 pace from the mile mark to the turn around while losing 20 ft elevation).  I then purposefully slowed down a bit until I hit my mark equalling one mile from the house in 23:27.  At this point I sped up and ran a half mile hard in 2:42 (while gaining 27 ft elevation).  This surprised me as I was expecting to run that half mile slower than I did due to the elevation gain.  I then slowed down during the last half mile while trying to run just fast enough to keep relatively even splits for the first and second halves of the run, and I ended up running the last half mile in 3:41 (70 ft elevation gain) to reach the house in 29:50, and finishing that portion of my run at 30:00 even.

I was happy with how the run went today.  Now, the real test will be to see how tired or stiff I feel later on today, or tomorrow morning.