Weekly Training Blog July 3 to 9, 2017

Monday AM 6 miles on roads and trails in Saratoga, NY, 46:10, first couple of miles with Melissa and Uta.

PM 4.3 miles on roads and trails in Saratoga, 29:54, solo.

Tuesday AM about 3 miles warm up, some with Melissa, some drills, some strides.  Race Firecracker 4 mile, 6th place 20:08, basically just turned myself inside out trying to stay with Scott Mindel.  Both of us were hoping to slip under 20:00 but just couldn't quite hold it up the last hill before the finish.  Splits 4:52(got sucked out by all the fast starting youngsters.  At 400m I was in about 40th place with 2 or 3 high school girls in front of me), 9:53(5:01), starting to hurt pretty good, 14:55(5:02), I was basically all out at this point.  last mile was 5:12.  I was really struggling.   Good run for where I'm at but I would have been thrilled to slide under 20 at this point. 2 mile cool down some with Melissa and Uta

PM 4 miles on roads back home solo, 28:46

Wednesday AM ~9 miles, I don't have an exact time.  Running with melissa, about 5 or 6 miles in Melissa tripped and really bashed her knee. I ran home to get the car and go pick her up but had shut my watch off for part of that return trip and it wasn't my normal route, I took the most direct way back, so I don't know the exact distance or time.  Melissa got X-rays and nothing broken but the knee was the size of a softball for a couple days.

PM 5.1 miles on road with Uta, in 36:03

Thursday AM 3.8 warm up to track, some drills, 16x200 meters for speed with full 400m jog breaks in about 2mins.  The idea is to be fresh for each 200 as to run with good form and work on the muscular side of things.  averaged just over 31 for the 200's. 3.8 cool down.

Friday AM road and trail 10 solo, 1:09:01
PM road 5 with Uta, 33:07

Saturday Noon 1.5 warm up, very slow with Melissa and Uta as Melissa tested out the knee. Then 10 mile fundamental tempo around Phillips fields, very humid!, 58:00.  Really dehydrated by the end.

Sunday AM road and trail 12, 1:25:20

Summary about 90 miles for the week, three quality sessions, one of which was the race which was a very nice step in the right direction.  Looking back at this week I would say that I'm actually training now which is nice to see.  I should start to progress fairly quickly now.
  This week Melissa and I are going to Bemidji, Mn to stay at Dick Beardsley's bed and breakfast, see the headwaters of the Mississippi and do some exploring.  I'm really excited about the trip.  I love travel, I love got places I've never been.  Melissa has agreed to go fishing with Dick and I which is awesome and the place looks really good for running.  As with any travel week however it means my training plans are quite flexible and we'll just see how things turn out.
  Last fun thing for the week is resting HR.  I don't use heart rate much for training but I have long used my resting HR when I wake up as a gauge of how my body was doing.  I have a pretty low HR after all these years though it does go up when I have a lay off.  Anyway one of the things I love about the garmin watch I have is that it tracks hr and gives you an average resting HR as well as your low for the last 4 hours.  It is just more accurate than checking your pulse as you are getting up.  Generally speaking my average resting is just about 40 bpm.  Give or take 3 or 4 beats.  When I haven't run in a month or more that comes up to the high 40s or even low 50s.  However for whatever reason on Thursday this week it was much lower,

 It isn't the best pic but if you look to you can see my HR at the moment on the left was 47 bpm but my average resting HR to the right was 30.  This is very low for me.  I know when I had surgery on my back the nurse said I stayed pretty steady around 26 bpm, but I sorta figured that was artificially low because of the anesthesia.  Over the years I have often had it down around 30 when I checked it in the morning but this is  the first time since I got the watch that I have had an average this low.  Occasionally it has dipped into the 20's for a minute or two but not had that as a resting average.  Anyway I just find it neat.  Hope you are well.