You must be swift as the coursing river (as long as it's the Lazy River) - comments welcome

April 15 - 21, 2024
5K training week 4

In which I have no idea what day it is

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This week's schedule

Monday
Easy/strides: 6.09 miles (10:07), avg. HR 151, max 173, 90% Z1-2
Lower body strength/HIIT

My Achilles was making me a little nervous, so I started out super duper easy. Fortunately I didn't have any problems with it, so I got back to normal kind of out of habit. Pretty good run overall.

The strength/HIIT was one of those routines I've done many times over the years but not in a while, so it was cool to see gains. I was lifting heavier on the strength sets and feeling less tired on the HIIT. While I wasn't too tired, I was feeling kind of fatigued by the time I finished (don't ask me to explain the difference but there is one). I think it's a combination of still recovering from the long run/race on Saturday and probably not getting enough protein afterwards. Nutrition is too complicated 😩

Tuesday
Easy/strides: 7.29 miles (9:32), avg. HR 155, max 178, 86% Z1-2
Core

It was a fairly pleasant morning and a fairly pleasant run. I do keep having this issue where I start doing strides and my HR goes up and just doesn't go back down again (especially when I'm already running uphill). I have just kind of given up on trying to fix this.

Wednesday
off

I finally hung my medal racks! I am still slightly afraid of the drill. (Am I the only one who looks at power tools and just sees easy ways to maim yourself by accident? 🫣)

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Two racks with medals hanging from them with bibs from my PR races in between, because by the time I realized the racks were weirdly far apart, I had already made a bunch of holes in the wall

Thursday
Workout: 1.54 mile WU/strides + 4 x 45s @ 1MP/90s RI + 10 min @ LTP + 2 min RI + 4 x 45s @ 1MP/90s RI + 1.75 mile CD
Split paces: 6:13, 6:39, 6:55, 5:57; 7:25; 6:39, 6:11, 5:43, 6:18
GAP splits: 6:07, 6:10, 5:38, 5:59; 7:24; 6:09, 6:02, 5:59, 6:13
Total: 6.97 miles, 1:04:00, avg. HR 159, max 193

Total body strength

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Workout analysis (GAP) chart

That was hard.

I mostly mean it was hard work, but pacing is also hard. I have to get used to the GAP on the trail again (though Strava's calculations always seem a little questionable to me). Regardless, though, I was probably going too fast on most of the mile pace intervals - paces with a "5" in front are definitely beyond my current fitness 😅 I wasn't too bad on the LT portion of the sandwich, especially for not being used to these paces. It was a struggle to keep that up in the second half of the interval, though. And I was walking the first half of the recovery intervals in the second set 🥵

It did not help that I had technical difficulties with my water bottle which resulted in only having water for the first mile or so. The little plastic piece that keeps the water from spilling out when you're not drinking from it stopped keeping the water from spilling out, and that clearly wasn't working for a speed workout. I tucked it behind a log and picked it up on my way back. Does anyone else have a problem with Nathan water bottles constantly breaking? I've had like six different models since I started running regularly two years ago and they've all died an extremely inconvenient death 😑

Anyway, even though I'm still working on the pacing, I feel like it was a success just to get through that workout without dying, so overall it's a win 🙌

I didn't have time to do my strength workout right when I got back from my run, and by the time I got to it, I was feeling really tired and wasn't sure how it would go. But I actually felt better when I was moving. I definitely didn't get as many rounds in as Nicole, but I was just happy it didn't suck as much as I thought it might. (That seems to be a theme for the day.)

Friday
Easy: 6.3 miles (9:56), avg. HR 151, max 169 (?)
Core

I was feeling tired after Thursday's workout, so I was a bit sluggish starting out. It was cooler than it had been for the past few days, which wasn't the worst thing but I did kind of wish I had long sleeves. After a few stiff, chilly minutes, though, I felt okay for the most part.

I did the core workout as kind of a warmup, and it was...more difficult than I was expecting. My legs kept twitching on the reverse crunches 😬

Saturday
Long: 13.21 miles (9:39), ???
Yoga

I enjoyed some quite pleasant running weather this morning. It was about mid-50s and cloudy when I went out, which is pretty much my ideal. Since my handheld was broken, I took my hydration vest with half a liter of Skratch and half a liter of plain water (and finished about half of the water and most of the Skratch). First time I've used that in a while!

All in all, a pretty good run. I think I was going a teensy bit harder than I maybe should have, but it was hard to tell, at least from my HR, because my watch was cadence-locked for like 8 miles. Le sigh.

In addition to the water and Skratch, I had two GUs and a UCAN gel. Also my abs were sore from Friday 😅

I did the yoga in the afternoon, and mostly I did the easier version of everything because I was tired. BUT I did feel the most balanced I ever have trying Dancer! So that was exciting. Also the dog wanted to help 🤣

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My dog "helping" me with yoga by laying his head in my lap

Sunday
Easy/strides: 6.14 miles (10:20), avg. HR 154, max 167, 98% Z1-2
Upper body strength

Why is it cold again?? It was in the 40s when I got up, and I didn't like it 🥶 I saved my run for the afternoon when it was at least above 50. My legs felt kind of heavy, but otherwise it was okay.

Totals
Running: 7h 28m, 46 miles
Strength/mobility: 2h 16m
Total: 9h 45m

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Weekly training log

So I successfully kept my long run on Saturday, but then I was really confused about what day it was. Like, yesterday afternoon I was trying to see when people I know finished London, and I was so confused about why the results weren't up yet. And then I realized the race wasn't until the next day 🤣 Moral of the story: you can change when you do your runs, but changing when you think you do your runs takes longer!

Coming up
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Next week's schedule

Well, I decided it wouldn't hurt to add some speedwork to my long runs, so I'm doing a classic 5K workout with at least 4 extra miles added on 🫠 We'll see how it goes!

I'll also probably keep the schedule shifted back a day, but it's too much work to update the spreadsheet 🙃
 
I love your two medal racks for DC and Disney!

I have a Nathan speed draw water bottle and the top broke on mine, same issue as you had. Thankfully I found you can buy replacement tops on Amazon!
 

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