Skip to main content

Spring Training


Another month has gone by. My whole family came down with a nasty chest cold the week of March 21st that literally crushed my ability to workout and push through anything longer than about an hour. I skipped my long runs the weekend of the 26th/27th. We went on vacation the following weekend and all I mustered out on that trip was an 8 mile run in East County San Diego. It was a little concerning as the difference between my planned and executed miles looked like this:

March 21-27:
PLANNED: 44 Miles
EXECUTED: 4 Miles

March 28-April 3:
PLANNED: 36 Miles
EXECUTED: 22.1 Miles

I did take the time however, to rest and take the time off that my body needed to in order to recover. After getting back from San Diego I hopped right back into training, and I felt like a new person. The old nagging hamstring injury felt healed, my fitness was better than before, and I have literally felt great the past couple of weeks.

EXECUTED MILES:
April 4- April 10: 49.2 Miles
April 11-April 17: 53.9 Miles

I ran my first marathon in training last weekend and paid attention to heartrate and pacing. The idea was to go steady the entire time. While I felt a little cooked towards the last 4 miles, I held a consistent pace and an average HR of around 150 which was spot on to where I wanted to be.

I have held true to my theme of consistency and it is paying off. My first 50K of the year this weekend and we will see how it goes. My goal for that race is to finish strong. I want to get to a place where 30 miles feels somewhat easy. My strategy for Saturday is to fuel and hydrate well and try not to get hyped up in the mania of the crowd. That will be a challenge knowing how competitive I get.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tall Trees and Tough Trails. The 2024 Cascade Crest 100

Welcome to Easton! The welcome sign that we stopped to take a picture of just about summed up our experience here. On the hour or so drive up from Seattle, Julie and I couldn't stop taking about the amazing trees and dense forest that lined the highway. The trees were so tall that you couldn't even catch a view of the entire towns that laid just behind them. Definitely a contrast to Colorado where the main attraction are the 14ers that line our skylines. I'm so happy that Cascade Crest 100 found me. The idea to travel to Washington for a 100 mile race started when I looked into doing a race close to a good college friend of mine that moved to Washington several years ago. I hadn't seen him or his family in years, and it would be an excuse to both see them and have an epic adventure at the same time. I had heard about the Cascade Crest 100 from a couple of friends that had raced it previously. As a Hard Rock 100 Qualifier, the race had a reputation of both difficul...

An Excited Heart

It’s no big secret that I was not feeling super great heading into my last race. It was the perfect storm in many ways. I had a stressful week at work two weeks prior working on a massive deadline followed by a heavy training volume week where I nearly doubled my weekly mileage and then fell behind in sleep the week leading into Quad Rock. I was super stressed out heading into Quad Rock due to the distance and vertical gain. I felt comfortably trained up to the 35 mile distance, but I had failed to put in the back-to-back days in training that would have given me confidence to make the jump to 50. The night leading into my race I had some significant arrhythmia while I was lying in bed. The feeling was not new to me. 10-years ago I was diagnosed with benign PVC’s. The condition takes place when nodes in the ventricles fire off signals that interfere with the main SA pace-making node in the heart. The result is a feeling of a skipped heartbeat followed by a hard thud in your chest ...

Running

I am running. Sometimes I feel like I’m running towards something. Or is it an illusion? Am I running towards a goal or am I running away from responsibility? Am I running to stay healthy or is an excuse that I give myself to get out of work? Why do I feel trapped in the walls of my life? Do I prefer running outside because I feel like my life is a treadmill inside? Do I feel the need to validate myself with stats? 13.1, 26, 140.6? Vert, weekly miles, finishers medals, training time. Am I filling my time with meaningless accomplishment? Am I running to avoid being fat for fear of superficial judgment? Do I run to feel better? My mind often races faster than my feet. I go run to try and catch up enough to shut it all down. Just when I get there, fear of snakes, mountain lions, bears and even moose speed things up again. I holler out a yell. Scare off the creation that sits higher than me on the food chain. Why do I hurt so much? Why do I enjoy the pain in a sick way? Why can’t I ...