Monday, December 29, 2014

Training December 22 to 28, 2014. Picking up Steam

Monday
AM 3 mile walk with Uta, my dog.
NOON 30mins on Curve treadmill-4.85 miles- than 4 strides with jog breaks top speed 15.4mph total 5.5 miles
4PM Dale 5 with Uta in cold rain, 34:57 tot. 5
XT pull ups on assisted machine, YTI, wharton thorasic

Tuesday
AM 20min warm up on curve with 4 strides mixed in. 2.65 miles.  Monaghetti fartlek on curve, 3.25 miles in 20mins, this was a full effort. Gives some idea of how much tougher the curve is than regular running. I have never covered less than 3.7 miles on a Monaghetti on the road. I averaged only 6:09 pace which is about a minute per mile slower than I would have expected on the roads today.
PM 4 mile walk with Uta
XT pull ups on assisted machine, YTI, wharton

Wednesday
AM trail 4 with Uta in light cold rain 27:55 tot. 4
PM regular 10 in driving cold rain 1:02:39, should have done strides here but had to go to the bathroom and after sitting a few minutes in cold wet gear I was fairly well locked up and not heading back out to tear something trying to force the strides tot. 10+
XT YTI, wharton

Thursday
Merry Christmas!!
AM 4 miles with Uta and Melissa on the roads, 28:36 tot. 4
XT ankle drills, YTI, wharton, drinking of egg nog, eating of fudge etc..

Friday
NOON 2 mile warm up, 14:20, skipping warm up, light drills, regular 10 loop run as moderate progression run- 56:17, half way in 29:06, last mile 5:12. no loss of coordination, did not wear shoulder back harness. This is not a hard session aerobically but I was very happy it was not hard for the coordination either. tot. 12+
4PM on curve treadmill 20mins warm up, 2.78 miles, 10x30second hard efforts with 1min jog recoveries. This is to replace 30second hill repeats. I hunch forward even more on hills where as the curve forces me to hold perfect body position so this is much better for my form while getting similar benefits in most other regards. tot. 5+
XT pull ups on assisted machine, YTI, wharton

Saturday
AM 45mins on curve including 4 strides in the last 5 minutes. 6.65 miles, this is my longest run on the curve yet and my shoulders felt it! tot. 7ish
PM Trail 47:35 with Uta, tot. 7+
XT pull ups on assisted machine, YTI, wharton

Sunday
Fundamental Block
AM 2+ mile warm up with Uta, 14:00, dropped her off, skipping warm up and light drills. 20k at fundamental pace around my regular 20k loop, 1:11:38. That is 5:45/3:34 pace. tot. 14.5ish
PM  2+ mile warm up with Uta, 14:17, dropped her off, skipping warm up and light drills, 20k at fundamental pace on my regular 20k loop, 1:12:55. That is 5:52/3:38 pace. tot. 14.5
XT YTI, ton of wharton, 2xskipping warm up, 2xlight drills

Summary

95 miles for the week with three workouts. Missed strides on a couple of days but that is going to happen in the winter be it for ice or cold rain stiffening you up. Not much running on Christmas and only the one workout run on Tuesday but given how sick I was at the end of last week I will take it for sure.  
The best session of the week was certainly the fundamental block. This is not as tough as a special or specific block but it was a HUGE test for the coordination and I didn't even wear the shoulders back harness and I was able to hold coordination without any issue. That said my shoulders were screaming by the last few miles of the second session.  This is my first block session of any type in years and it has also been years since I have run 29 miles in a day so I was pretty wrecked after.  
To steal from a song. 'I ain't as good as I once was…' In years past no matter how tired I was I could pretty much guarantee that the second session would be faster than the first but also back than stuff like this was my bread and butter.  I expect with consistent endurance training that will again become the case.  I also expect a very big jump in fitness from being able to do these long tempos and other workouts I have been away from for a long time that always had the largest impact on my fitness.  I find that potential very exciting because I was actually pretty fit coming into this cycle- raced ok last fall - consistently around 30:30 10k effort on the roads- and did some very solid sessions- i.e. covering over 4 miles in Monaghetti fartleks and the like.  
I am going to try and start posting a few times a week.  My idea is to post about the hows and whys of different workouts- tempo tuesdays, workout wednesdays that sort of thing and perhaps to do a throw back thursday thing where I talk about workouts, races or other running centered experiences from my past.  If there is any workout or whatever that you are particularly interested in please let me know.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

That is a pretty legit Sunday double session. 2 runs of 14+ is a rough day. I've never attempted something like that.

What's the advantage of doing that over say doing a harder effort 18-20 miler?

RunningDoc said...

Nate,
Great to see that you are over your illness and that you are holding the coordination. Looking forward to following the new blog - the old blog was very informative. Hope that things continue to improve and look forward to following your spring and summer.
RunningDoc

nateruns@hotmail.com said...

James- the advantages of doing the double. Specifically for me I don't think I could hold form and through that coordination for 40k at this point so this helps build the specific strength to do that.
For everyone similarly this builds the ability to do a better long hard run down the road. Right now I couldn't run 25 miles at 5:48 per mile over these hills. So I could go out and try to do it as fast as I can and hope to get faster each time but you will find that often the improvements don't come as you want them to when you approach it this way. Instead you get much greater gains by running under distance at the speed you want and then trying to increase distance with each return to the workout or by doing something like this where you break the session into two and build the strength endurance to do it as one. This session builds towards a number of other sessions all of which are steps towards racing a strong marathon. With this session I build directly towards two other sessions the first is 35 to 40k at the same pace as a single run. The second is the same workout again but run at 90 to 95% marathon pace- more in the 3:20's per k. That session builds to two specific marathon workouts directly. first 35 to 40k at 90 to 95% marathon pace and the second is a specific block, something like 10k in 34, 10k at marathon pace where you then repeat that same session in the afternoon. Those two workouts build directly to racing a good marathon.
RunningDoc, thanks!

Running Doc said...

Nate - I have noticed you have been doing some workouts on the Curve treadmill. Why on the curve versus a regular treadmill?

Running Doc

nateruns@hotmail.com said...

Running Doc- I'm using the curve because it forces me to keep good form. In my case shoulders back. If I run on it in what still feels like my 'natural' form I will fall flat on my face. So for me specifically I am using the curve as one of my main tools for fixing my shoulder position and through that my coordination. It gives me the most instant feedback on my form, even better than running with the harness.
Now generally speaking there are a few things I love about the curve that put it above a regular treadmill for me even if you discount my specific shoulder issue. First you can do strides on it. This is all but impossible on a regular treadmill but the curves changes speeds with you and goes as fast as you go so it is super easy to do. Second you can do fartleks again all but impossible to do a good fartlek on a regular treadmill on the curve it is perfect. Finally it is actually harder aerobically to run on the curve than on flat ground. The opposite of a regular treadmill. I have found that I can maintain a very high heart rate and aerobic effort on the curve but not get beat up in the legs. It is almost like getting an extra tempo run in for free during the week.
In the interest of fair and balanced advertising the curve has some drawbacks. The biggest is cost. The stupid thing costs about $7k once you factor in delivery. So at least for the time being I am going to a gym that has some of them. Second the strength of most treadmills is the tempo run. This is not the case with the curve. It isn't very easy to hold a steady pace on the curve and figuring out what pace to go is very hard. There is very little research out there about pace equivalency for the curve. All I have found is stuff that says basically, yup it is much harder to run the same pace on the curve as compared to a regular treadmill or flat outdoor running. I have not done enough hard running on the curve yet to start and create my own pace guidelines.