Run 1/22

Ran with ESR in Mill Creek - 4.3 miles in 44:00 minutes. I ran with my friend CD and we chatted most of the way. Overall it was an easy pace, but I could have done easier as my heart rate snuck above 80% once or twice.

My right calf is sore, so I'll stretch it out. This past week was unusual as I ran three times: one long run (half marathon), one hard run (Wednesday's ESR run), and this one. So my calf might be sore as this has been quite a bit. On the other hand, when I get back into the gym maybe I need to do some calf raises. ;)

CD talked about doing the Whidbey Island half-marathon in April. It interests me, because I've heard it is beautiful, but this probably isn't the right year for me to do it. I don't want to go overboard on running. In fact, I need to carefully think about recovery from a half-marathon - this week was bad because I haven't been on the bike at all. Part of that was time spent traveling, and I was really tired the last two days. Anyway, I have another half coming up in February and I need to make sure it doesn't disrupt bike training. My plan for the February half mary is to recover by swimming the following day (Monday), taking a rest day (Tuesday), and then biking Wednesday through Friday.

For now, no more running until next Saturday! It will be all about the bike until then.

Rest 1/21

Well, today wound up as a rest day as well. I really need to get in some bike time this weekend, but I'm not sure when that will happen.

Rest 1/20

I'm just beat today, not sure why. So, rather than climb on the trainer and beat myself into the ground, I'll just get to sleep early and rest. :)

Run 1/19

My running club planned to meet for pizza after the Wednesday night run, to celebrate some birthdays. That sounded fun so I decided to show up. It was my Wednesday night run from this location (there is another group that meets for a track workout and I attended that once).

I was expecting an easy run back and forth along with Sammamish River Trail, because the meeting place was the Foot Zone at Redmond Town Center. If not easy, perhaps a run through the downtown area, which is pretty flat. Basically, I was just looking for an easy run but nooooo, I got a lot more than that! In fact, it was probably a textbook example of how not to recover after a recent event.

First, I found myself with the "fast" group, the kind of folks who do extra distance whenever possible. Since I hadn't been on the route before, I had to keep up. I was off the pace a bit, but with the various streetlights, I was able to catch up. Or, they were nice and waited for me.

Second, the route was hilly! We ran from RTC to Old Redmond Road, climbed the hill to 148th, ran down to 520, and then back to RTC on the path next to 520.

Here is my heart rate data:




The sudden dips in heart rate correspond to traffic lights - I stopped my HR monitor while waiting. Note the nice long hill at the start of the run.

Total time was 1:09:00, and according to TOPO, the total distance was 7.2 miles.

The route




I'm planning to run this Saturday as well, largely because another friend CD mailed and asked if I would attend. I am absolutely, positively, running easy on Saturday!!

Swim 1/18

Hit the pool for 1500 yards - 1x100 warmup, and then 7x200. Total time was about 42 minutes, and I took 30 seconds or so between each set.

So far my swimming is just laps and working on TI form. Once I work up to 2000 yards I'll start adding in other drills - pull buoy, harder effort, stroke trainers, etc. Fundamentally, I'm not really worried about getting faster so I'm not going crazy with hard swim workouts. I'll eventually split my pool time into 500 yards of TI drills (possibly with fist gloves), 500 yards of regular drills, and then the remaining yardage as laps.

2.4 miles is 4224 yards, so I'll round that a bit. I'll use one mile = 1800 yards (instead of 1760) and look at the schedule.

Rest 1/17

I had an early flight, was a little stiff from the run, and decided to take the day off.

Week 2

Jan 10 - Jan 16

	Time
Swim	0:30
Bike	2:15
Run	2:05
Strength	0:00
Weight	143.2 lb
Body Fat	16.2%

I missed a few days of training due to travel.

Run 1/16

Houston half-marathon - for a little more info see my regular blog.

13.1 miles in 2:02:26 (chip time). Ran harder than I intended, but I notice that during an event, this is always the case. For an IM, I will absolutely need to keep a lid on it as going too hard will be destructive.

I'm sore in all the usual places - left hip, right ankle and achilles tendon. I'll be stretching and so forth tonight. Maybe I'll hit the pool Tuesday (tomorrow is a travel day and will wipe out my swim time) and that will certainly help.

I hit the 10 mile marker between 1:33 and 1:34, and knew then that breaking 2 hours would be really tough - I'd have to up my pace to do a 26 minute 5K, and I was feeling a bit tired/sore from running on the street. So I decided to just coast on in and enjoy it.

This event supplies 5K and 10K splits: my 5K time was 29:53 and my 10K time was 58:44. I was 216/455 in my division.