@avondale i soooo appreciate your experience. For reals. Yes. I have been walking the uphills. I’ve started trying to maintain my intervals up the more gentle ones, but anything with a grade over maybe 5% I’m just trying to walk at a good clip (I’m working on a “hills” playlist.)
As for messing with my intervals, I kind of do that every training plan, so it’s not really anything new there. I’m not varying them wildly though; more like 20/30 vs 30/30 vs 40-50/30.
This was the guideline that I read somewhere (maybe the trailrunning reddit) when I started getting more serious about hills: wear a hat with a brim (i.e., baseball cap - or imagine you're wearing one). If you can't see the top of the hill because your brim cuts it off, then it's either too long or too steep to run up it, so power walk. If you CAN see the top of the hill beneath the brim, then try to easy run up it. Obviously, this guideline depends a lot on the T+D and how tired you are, etc., but it helps you start thinking about judging when to run and when to walk.
I still keep this in mind for trying to keep my expectations reasonable.
I honestly just this past 6 months when I was training hard for a very hilly race got up to the point of being able to easy run hills of like 3 - 5%. If they are any length, the effort adds up quickly.
It's tough to take in typical advice that you read in different places about trail running because so many folks are just much faster runners and don't realize it. They are still walking steep hills (really, everyone does, even the elites), but for shallower gradients, they don't realize how difficult it is for slower runners. On a 5% grade hill, they might go from a 9 min/mile to 12 min/mile and still make good progress - but they make a big deal about how they have to go so slow (it's true for them!). But those of us that easy run at 13 min/mile then get slowed down to a brisk walk even at the smallest hills.
There's nothing WRONG with that, but it means that when you read about what others may do or suggest, you have to take it with a big grain of salt.
Already talked about last Sunday in last week's day-late wrap-up.
Monday: was my rest day
Tuesday: ended up being a rest day too. I didn't manage to get my run in during the day, and then DD had an art show for her pre-school class and DH was refereeing basketball scrimmages and it just didn't happen. Not a big deal though because I needed to push my rest day back.
Wednesday: 4mi easy. This is when I attempted to "go fast" and my body wanted to know what I was doing. Respectfully. Then I had a mammogram, got new shoes from Fleet Feet, picked up a few new chicks, dropped everything off at the house, picked DD up from school, and then went to the MS track team awards. Go me for sucking it up and doing the run in the morning.
Thursday: 4mi with 2 hills. The new shoes felt good? Different, but good? PR'ed the hill segment, which was a little surprising. Apparently doing a lot of hills makes you better at them. Shocking information, I know.
Friday: 4mi. This sucked. As discussed in a pp, my calves were not happy with me at all. Whether that is due to the new shoes, more hills than usual, trying to "go fast" 2 days prior, or something else I'm not sure. But I ended up walking all but about 2/3 of this because it's better to walk and not limp.
Saturday: It worked out that I took Tuesday off because I was trying to push Friday's rest day to Saturday to accommodate the job we had to do that day.
Ended up with sore/tired legs from standing at a table for almost 4 hours in rubber boots. Every other year or so we raise a big batch of chickens for meat and the process them ourselves. And today was processing day. When we are raising them, we basically can't go anywhere for 8 weeks, so we always try to time it out so it doesn't interfere with the sports schedules or camping trips. I am glad to be done hauling feed and water 2x a day for 50 stinky birds.
Sunday: 10mi on trail. And I woke up to an AQ alert from the wildfires in Canada. Not great news when you know you're going on a very long run. I reached out to a couple of people to see if they wanted to hop in with me for a loop, but everyone was out of town for something, so I sucked it up and did it alone. I figured it would take me about 2.5 hours, and I was right on with that estimation (2:29:39). I took my hydration vest (when I was looking at new ones earlier in the week I realized I had forgotten about 2 additional tightening straps, and when I loosened those my vest fits great again!) 2 stroopwaffles, and a pack of sportbeans I had stashed from one of the MW races. I also stashed on of my rundisney cooling towels since they fold up tiny and fit nicely into the smallest pocked on my vest. Oatmeal with a dollop of peanut butter and some honey for breakfast. I had made sure to drink plenty of water on Friday and Saturday, and a liquid IV on Saturday afternoon as well. I wished I had something with electrolytes in it during the run, and was happy I had the cooling towel for the 2nd half of the run when the temperature, and therefore the humidity, went up.
I was the first one on the trail that day, which meant I got to clean out all of the spider webs for ~5mi. Gross. As usual, I stopped to stretch my calves out about a mile/mile-and-a-half in, but they didn't bother me otherwise, which makes me even more suspicious of the new shoes. I set my intervals to 30/30 for this run (I've used 20/30 the last new times) and told myself that I would walk extra when my HR got over 160. This ended up working out pretty well. One thing I did discover, and I feel like it's important information for August, is that I actually needed to focus more on the flatter part of the run. I assumed that my pace would just naturally drop in the very low 14s or mid/upper 13s on the flat section of the trail but what actually happened is that my walking pace slowed down a LOT and my pace stayed in the upper14s. Since I'm hoping to get a buffer in the middle 1/3 of my race where it's flat, this was an important lesson to learn. I ended with 866ft of ascent for this run (I'm not sure if I'll find a hillier run locally unless I want to repeat significantly smaller loops) and should pass last month's total some time this week.
I walked a couple of laps around the parking lot when I was done with the run, and then it was home to get cleaned up and head to the HS track awards (2.5 hours sitting at cafeteria tables, OY!) and then 2 graduation open house parties for kids we have coached since T-ball. I wore compression socks and even commented to DH about how normal my legs felt and then adding, "Hopefully I don't regret making that comment tomorrow morning!"
I'm supposed to run 6mi on a trail again today and I'm tempted to try a new one to change things up a little bit. We will see what fits into the schedule though since I somehow still have too many things going on with the kids' schedules. If driving to a trail won't fit, then I'll just run it at home here and make sure to include a few miles of gravel road.
Already talked about last Sunday in last week's day-late wrap-up.
Monday: was my rest day
Tuesday: ended up being a rest day too. I didn't manage to get my run in during the day, and then DD had an art show for her pre-school class and DH was refereeing basketball scrimmages and it just didn't happen. Not a big deal though because I needed to push my rest day back.
Wednesday: 4mi easy. This is when I attempted to "go fast" and my body wanted to know what I was doing. Respectfully. Then I had a mammogram, got new shoes from Fleet Feet, picked up a few new chicks, dropped everything off at the house, picked DD up from school, and then went to the MS track team awards. Go me for sucking it up and doing the run in the morning.
Thursday: 4mi with 2 hills. The new shoes felt good? Different, but good? PR'ed the hill segment, which was a little surprising. Apparently doing a lot of hills makes you better at them. Shocking information, I know.
Friday: 4mi. This sucked. As discussed in a pp, my calves were not happy with me at all. Whether that is due to the new shoes, more hills than usual, trying to "go fast" 2 days prior, or something else I'm not sure. But I ended up walking all but about 2/3 of this because it's better to walk and not limp.
Saturday: It worked out that I took Tuesday off because I was trying to push Friday's rest day to Saturday to accommodate the job we had to do that day.
Ended up with sore/tired legs from standing at a table for almost 4 hours in rubber boots. Every other year or so we raise a big batch of chickens for meat and the process them ourselves. And today was processing day. When we are raising them, we basically can't go anywhere for 8 weeks, so we always try to time it out so it doesn't interfere with the sports schedules or camping trips. I am glad to be done hauling feed and water 2x a day for 50 stinky birds.
Sunday: 10mi on trail. And I woke up to an AQ alert from the wildfires in Canada. Not great news when you know you're going on a very long run. I reached out to a couple of people to see if they wanted to hop in with me for a loop, but everyone was out of town for something, so I sucked it up and did it alone. I figured it would take me about 2.5 hours, and I was right on with that estimation (2:29:39). I took my hydration vest (when I was looking at new ones earlier in the week I realized I had forgotten about 2 additional tightening straps, and when I loosened those my vest fits great again!) 2 stroopwaffles, and a pack of sportbeans I had stashed from one of the MW races. I also stashed on of my rundisney cooling towels since they fold up tiny and fit nicely into the smallest pocked on my vest. Oatmeal with a dollop of peanut butter and some honey for breakfast. I had made sure to drink plenty of water on Friday and Saturday, and a liquid IV on Saturday afternoon as well. I wished I had something with electrolytes in it during the run, and was happy I had the cooling towel for the 2nd half of the run when the temperature, and therefore the humidity, went up.
I was the first one on the trail that day, which meant I got to clean out all of the spider webs for ~5mi. Gross. As usual, I stopped to stretch my calves out about a mile/mile-and-a-half in, but they didn't bother me otherwise, which makes me even more suspicious of the new shoes. I set my intervals to 30/30 for this run (I've used 20/30 the last new times) and told myself that I would walk extra when my HR got over 160. This ended up working out pretty well. One thing I did discover, and I feel like it's important information for August, is that I actually needed to focus more on the flatter part of the run. I assumed that my pace would just naturally drop in the very low 14s or mid/upper 13s on the flat section of the trail but what actually happened is that my walking pace slowed down a LOT and my pace stayed in the upper14s. Since I'm hoping to get a buffer in the middle 1/3 of my race where it's flat, this was an important lesson to learn. I ended with 866ft of ascent for this run (I'm not sure if I'll find a hillier run locally unless I want to repeat significantly smaller loops) and should pass last month's total some time this week.
I walked a couple of laps around the parking lot when I was done with the run, and then it was home to get cleaned up and head to the HS track awards (2.5 hours sitting at cafeteria tables, OY!) and then 2 graduation open house parties for kids we have coached since T-ball. I wore compression socks and even commented to DH about how normal my legs felt and then adding, "Hopefully I don't regret making that comment tomorrow morning!"
I'm supposed to run 6mi on a trail again today and I'm tempted to try a new one to change things up a little bit. We will see what fits into the schedule though since I somehow still have too many things going on with the kids' schedules. If driving to a trail won't fit, then I'll just run it at home here and make sure to include a few miles of gravel road.
One thing I did discover, and I feel like it's important information for August, is that I actually needed to focus more on the flatter part of the run. I assumed that my pace would just naturally drop in the very low 14s or mid/upper 13s on the flat section of the trail but what actually happened is that my walking pace slowed down a LOT and my pace stayed in the upper14s. Since I'm hoping to get a buffer in the middle 1/3 of my race where it's flat, this was an important lesson to learn.
I've been working on trying to increase my walking speed because of my extremely short legs and therefore very short stride. I started by focusing on increasing the cadence during regular walks rather than lengthening my stride, and now my walking speed has increased by at least a few minutes per mile. (It's hard to track exactly since I usually walk outside with the dog, and on the treadmill I can set the pace.) My easy paces have gotten slightly faster even in the summer, and I find myself not slowing down as much during the walk breaks as I keep up the cadence. And no shin pain!
I've been working on trying to increase my walking speed because of my extremely short legs and therefore very short stride. I started by focusing on increasing the cadence during regular walks rather than lengthening my stride, and now my walking speed has increased by at least a few minutes per mile. (It's hard to track exactly since I usually walk outside with the dog, and on the treadmill I can set the pace.) My easy paces have gotten slightly faster even in the summer, and I find myself not slowing down as much during the walk breaks as I keep up the cadence. And no shin pain!
Right! I've done the same thing, trying to get the walking pace closer to 15min instead of the meandering 17-18min. When I'm road running it's not as much of an issue, but when I run the longer, hilly part of that trail (there's a 3.2mi very hilly loop on one side of the road, and a 1.7mi, flatter loop on the other side) I'm really thinking about powering up the hills to not lose a bunch of time. But I found that I was just kind of relaxing more on the short loop (because the flatter trail is also smoother and I'm not as concerned about tripping on thing) and then my brain went OK we don't have to keep you from falling to your death now and everything slowed down.
But also, I've indicated in yellow the "flatter" parts of this route.
I've been working on trying to increase my walking speed because of my extremely short legs and therefore very short stride. I started by focusing on increasing the cadence during regular walks rather than lengthening my stride, and now my walking speed has increased by at least a few minutes per mile.
Cadence drills are a huge help. Another thing that I do once a week is a 4 mile progression walk. The concept is to walk each mile faster, starting with a "window shopping pace" and not quite getting to a race walk for the final mile. I've been doing this for quite a while (I walk with a friend once a week so I do this workout then) and it has definitely helped me increase my walking speed.
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Not great news when you know you're going on a very long run. I reached out to a couple of people to see if they wanted to hop in with me for a loop, but everyone was out of town for something, so I sucked it up and did it alone. I figured it would take me about 2.5 hours, and I was right on with that estimation (2:29:39). I took my hydration vest (when I was looking at new ones earlier in the week I realized I had forgotten about 2 additional tightening straps, and when I loosened those my vest fits great again!) 2 stroopwaffles, and a pack of sportbeans I had stashed from one of the MW races. I also stashed on of my rundisney 
webs 
. Sounds like a busy week but you got the runs in 
I started by focusing on increasing the cadence during regular walks rather than lengthening my stride, and now my walking speed has increased by at least a few minutes per mile. (It's hard to track exactly since I usually walk outside with the dog, and on the treadmill I can set the pace.) My easy paces have gotten slightly faster even in the summer, and I find myself not slowing down as much during the walk breaks as I keep up the cadence. And no shin pain!
