Week of Apr. 17 - 21, 2023 - pre-race
This was the eighteenth week of an 18-week training plan that has the Hurt the Dirt Trail Marathon on April 22 as my next goal race. It's tomorrow, as I write this sitting in my hotel room!
I flew into Grand Rapids today, got my rental car, got checked into my hotel, and got a few groceries. I went to the state park where the race will be and did an hour walk on the trail.
Currently the hourly forecast has about a 33% chance of ran from 2 - 5am. Temperatures drop from 50 F at midnight to 42 F (windchill of 39 F) at 8:00am - the race starts at 7am. Then the temperature climbs to 47-48 F, but the windchill will still be several degrees cooler. I think I'm probably going to go with my t-shirt instead of tank top tomorrow, mostly because of the windchill, but we'll see how it looks in the morning.
I thought I'd get my week summary done before I do my race recap. This week was another hugely busy one for me at work, so I didn't do my usual morning strength training - which probably wasn't a bad thing before the race. But unfortunately I also didn't get any extra sleep this week because between April 13 - 26, my students are remotely controlling telescopes in Utah and Australia for their semester project. I like to be online when they are starting the observing, since that is when the most problems occur, and so that means being awake midnight to 12:30am (for Utah start) and 7 - 7:30am (for Australia start), which really means short nights of sleep. But that's life, and I'd be fooling myself to think I would otherwise have gotten lots of extra sleep pre-race, because I never do.
Monday after work: 2-hr tennis doubles round-robin
Tuesday after work:
- 50 min easy on trail
- T+D 90, no effect, T 70 F
- time: 50:00
- distance: 3.88 mi
- average pace: 12:52 (GAP ave pace 12:54)
- splits: 13:12, 12:49 12:43, 12:44
- ave HR: 134 BPM - within my target range
- elevation gain: 255 ft (corrected)
- route: Northwest Branch Trail
Wednesday after work:
- 40 min easy on trail
- T+D 98, no effect, T 73 F
- time: 40:01
- distance
- T+D 98, no effect, T 73 F
- time: 40:01
- distance: 3.07 mi
- average pace: 13:02 (GAP ave pace 12:59)
- splits: 13:26, 12:43, 13:00, 12:20
- ave HR: 134 BPM - within my target range
- elevation gain: 57 ft (corrected)
- route: Rachel Carson Greenway Trail
- : 3.07 mi
- average pace: 13:02 (GAP ave pace 12:59)
- splits: 13:26, 12:43, 13:00, 12:20
- ave HR: 134 BPM - within my target range
- elevation gain: 57 ft (corrected)
- route: Rachel Carson Greenway Trail
Thursday after work:
- 30 min easy
- T+D 141, 3.5% effect, T 82 F
- time: 30:01
- distance: 2.5 mi
- average pace: 12:01 (GAP ave pace 12:02)
- splits: 12:02, 12:01, 12:00
- ave HR: 135 BPM - within my target range
- elevation gain: 70 ft (corrected)
- route: Sligo Creek Trail
- comments: So happy these were not the weather conditions for the race! Phew!
Friday afternoon: walk outside in Luton State Park, Michigan
- time: 56:17
- distance: 2.64 mi
- average pace: 21:20
Health
So my pain management doc and my neurologist STILL haven't gotten around to talking to each other. The pain management doc says he is out of ideas and he would be willing to try the same procedure again, but in a different one of his offices with a different machine (that's oversimplifying) against the possibility that by freaky coincidence the correct nerves were not "deactivated" by the recent procedure. I'm dubious of the worth of this, and at any rate, I can't carve out the time for it until my semester is over. Maybe they will TALK to each other by then. One of the nurses from the pain management group has been keeping me updated, and he's really apologetic and frustrated about how the two docs are not managing to talk.
Interestingly, my headache pain has not been quite as bad lately. There are several possibilities for this (beyond just coincidence). At the last visit with the neurologist, he had me restart a prior medicine with the intention of ramping it up to a higher level than I had tried previously - and I've gotten up to the higher levels. Second, I've not been playing a lot of tennis lately (mostly just luck of my match scheduling), and while I know that tennis bothers my neck and shoulders immediately afterward, maybe it's also contributing to the overall pain level. Third, because my work has been so busy, I haven't been doing much strength training the last couple of weeks, which is sort of like the tennis with the effect it has on my neck/shoulders. So who knows?
Race tomorrow!
