Training February 20 to 26, 2017

  Before getting into this weeks training rather then repeat myself constantly through each day gushing about the weather let me just say if I had this weather during my April vacation I would be thrilled. The long term implications of winters like this are obviously bad but short term every run this week was a pleasure.  Heck today's run would normally be some of the best February weather I would get and it was some of the worst I saw all week.   Awesome for the motivation, bad for our future.

Me at USATF-NE last weekend, that is my college coach and former boss, also one of my groomsmen Gary Gardner on the infield. Also notice the dude behind me barefoot!  I like me some barefoot running but not on a mondo track surface that will peal some skin right off. Photo by Leslie Whiting Poitras

Monday 7AM bikram yoga-90mins
               9AM 10.1 solo, 1:04:20 on roads.
               2PM road 4 solo, 26:25
               3:45PM drills, strides and massage with Anna

Tuesday 8AM 3 warm up with Uta, half mile more solo, drills, stides, 3 mile rolling tempo run 15:17 (5:02, 5:05, 5:10), 2mins recovery with drills- 10x30 second hills focus on form and power.  3+ cool down after run 6x10 weighted lunges starting at 45lbs up to 95lbs.
               5PM road 4 solo, 28:25

Wednesday 7AM bikram yoga-90mins
                    9AM road 16.1 solo, stopped for drills because of coordination at about 13 miles, 1:43:15

Thursday 8AM 3.1 warm up, drills- about 12mins worth, strides, 6x mile on road. Lightly rolling point to point stretch, more up on even reps, 3mins recovery with 3 to 4 drills in each recovery. 4:59, 5:04, 4:54, 5:02, 4:54, 5:03, 2.3 cool down, 16:00, after run 6x6 deadlifts starting at 135lbs up to 185lbs.

Friday 7AM bikram yoga-90mins
            9AM road 10.1 mile with Uta, 1:07:13
            5PM road 4 solo, 28:25

Saturday 9AM road 4 with Uta, who was tired from yesterday and watching over her Mom and I all week, 29:51
                11AM massage and treatment with Brad
               3PM at North Andover Track, 3 warm up, full drill set about 15mins, 30x100m focus on relaxation, felt great- average 15.3 but felt controlled and easy, jog back recoveries then a 200 in 30.7 just to hold the pace a bit longer, again felt smooth and great. 200 jog then a mile cool down- short on time.

Sunday 8AM 2.7 warm up,20:23, drills about 15mins worth, 19.1 mile fundamental tempo run, 1:49:34 about 5:44 pace, felt great but had to stop for drills because of coordination just after 8 miles and just after 15miles. ran 6:10 for the 9th mile with drills but really rolling in the closing miles and ran 5:47 for the 16th mile with the drills.

Summary 109 miles for week, first 100 plus mile week of 2017.   Two good hard sessions and two good moderate sessions.  I'm thrilled with the progression of the form in terms of how I feel at speed.  I have maybe never felt as good running 15 second hundreds as I did Saturday.  Keep in mind my all time 400m PB is 58.8 (14.7 per 100m).  I continued to feel just amazingly easy on the fundamental tempo today. But and it is really a BUT!!! As easy as it felt I started to come apart form wise after 5 or 6 miles and I started to feel the coordination going so I did the 3 hop exchange.  The nice thing is that is like starting over in 20 seconds and I then get right back in the game without letting the heart rate drop and so I can do workouts like this.  Actually if I find I go about the same distance at marathon pace 7 to 9 miles without loosing coordination I might even consider doing a marathon and just excepting that I'll be giving away a minute or two doing drills three times during the race.   Not ideal but if your in 2:15 shape a minute or two back isn't really all that different.   Still my hope is that with the continued drill work, all told I did over an hour of drills this week, and strength work I will get stronger and be able to hold the form for longer and longer and perhaps finally put the coordination problems to bed.  

                  

USATF-NE 5000m Race Video

  This is the race from this weekend with some pretty detailed commentary from Mike Giberti, including a shout out to Melissa which she appreciated...

Training Blog February 13 to 19, 2017

Monday AM snow removal, about 3 hours of it, after a large storm.  School was canceled so I also slept in.
               PM road 10 with very snowy, 1:09:41

Tuesday AM 5 miles with Melissa and Uta in 40:30
               PM 5k warm up, drills, strides, Moneghetti Fartlek,roads much improved but definitely not great, almost fell twice and had to be very careful on the turns.  Covered 3.75 according to the garmin, exact same as two weeks ago but in tougher conditions so another improvement. 3.6 mile cool down

Mona rates this fartlek an "atta boy.  Keep moving forward"

Wednesday PM medium long run of 16 miles- felt like shit on a stick at the start but started feeling ok around 7 or 8 miles.  The coordination leg also felt off very early on and I was sure I would have to stop and do drills, not all that uncommon last week on the same loop I stopped at around 11.5 miles, but as I approached 11.5 I was ok but not great so decided to work to 12 or 13 but as I continued on it felt better and better so by the last couple miles it felt perfectly normal and I never did drills. 1:47:38 running time, roads still improving but certainly still stretches that are not so hot- I purposely run a lot of side streets and culdesacs to avoid traffic but sometimes they don't get as cleaned up as the main streets. 

Thursday AM snow removal.  I had school so I didn't have much choice had to do this rather than the morning run. 

                 PM 5.8 miles with Uta.  Now if you haven't caught on I hate winter.  I would move to Hawaii in a second if Melissa would let me but she likes the seasons.  That said this was an absolutely beautiful run.  The sun was setting and shining through the branches of the trees and every single branch was still covered in a couple inches of fresh pure white snow and every other surface was covered in that perfect white blanket as well.  The soft setting sunlight setting off it just gave me a feeling of being happy to be alive. 

  Dropped Uta off and did 15 short hill sprints.  I didn't time them though I would guess they were about 10 to 12 seconds based on doing hills in the same spot in the past. 

Friday AM road 4 with Uta, 29:34

            PM road 10 solo, 1:08:32, very tired, 6x6 squats starting at 95lbs up to 145lbs.

Saturday AM road 10 solo, 1:05:03, footing mostly ok but a couple miles were a good bit icy and slushy.
                PM 6 and change solo, 43:03

Sunday AM 3.5 or so warm up, some on track 2.75 on 1200m loop around Harvard facilities with a group. Drills, strides and a bit under 200m hard effort.  Race 5000m at USATF-NE Indoor Championships. 1st place 14:41.78.  So that makes 15 straight years of at least one sub 15 5k race which makes me happy.  This was much faster then the same race last year, 14:55, and again I felt really strong for most of it so I'm very happy.  Obviously I have run much faster but a more apples to apples comparison is that my fastest 5k without specific track work is only a 14:20 so being only 20 seconds off of that makes me very happy and I feel I could certainly go 20 seconds faster with 6 to 8 weeks of specific work.  Now the weather and my schedule doesn't have me doing that just yet but it really does have me getting excited for the racing to come later in the year.  Post race I went for a long cool down with a large group, 10.25 miles in 1:11:40.  Mostly around the Charles.  Mixed in some of Dan V's 5/55 sprints that he loves for cool downs.

Summary 97 miles for the week.  One good hard workout, one nice moderate session and one nice race.  Another solid but not spectacular week.  I though for sure I was finally going to get a hundred mile week in but the snowy morning on Thursday killed that. To be honest I'm not sure I have ever run a 5k much under 15 before without at least some 100 mile weeks in the months before.  Now that is a bit of a misleading stat because there are very few times in the last 20 years when I haven't run a number of 100 mile weeks in any two month stretch.   Anyway very nice to be back racing in a normal range at last.  It is even nicer to be feeling good and running feeling free and loose.   I ran basically 3 seconds per K faster then at the same race last year.  If I can do the same at New Bedford I would be looking at being a minute faster.  I'm not sure I'll see the same improvement and I'm still have a lot of coordination stuff but it is really nice to be going in with an honest reason to have some bigger better goals.  Hope your week went well.

  

Training February 6 to 12, 2017

Monday AM 4 on roads with Uta and Melissa, 31:47
               PM road 10.1 solo, 1:08:03

Tuesday AM 4 on roads solo, 29:22
               PM massage- back has been not so hot last few days

Wednesday PM road 16 solo, 1:45:29

Thursday off we had a large snowstorm and I didn't feel like getting hit and the gym was closed.

Friday AM road 5.1 with Uta, 35:56
            PM on treadmill, 3 warm up 21:20, with 3 strides mixed in, 2x2 miles with 2mins rest, 10:21, 10:15.  I was planning on a 4 to 5 mile tempo but I was out too fast.  5:04 pace at 1.5% and after a mile I was hurting.  3 mile cool down in 20mins

Saturday AM road 10 solo, very snowy, 1:11:37 tot. 10
                Late AM acupuncture and massage.
                PM Bikram yoga 90mins hot yoga.

Sunday Noon  road 10 with Uta, very snowy, 1:12:49 tot. 10

Summary not a very good week between weather and my back feeling a bit off early in the week.  I think it is pretty obvious I have been playing it very cautious.  The last few years I have tried to train like I did when I was running full time and it seems every time I start to get fit I get a set back.  So I have made up my mind to focus on just being steady and letting more slide.  This doesn't work too well with my personality but so far the results are pretty good.  I'm actually back to decent shape and hopefully I can move forward from here.  I could see myself running pretty well by May/June if I don't have any major set backs.  Only time will tell.

I think this is a 5k from faster days.  Anyway it is a good image of what the 5k feels like when you get a good effort out.  I'm racing one this weekend so good to remind myself what I need to to do.

January 30 to February 5, 2017

Monday AM road 4 with Uta, 30:42 tot. 4
               PM drills and massage with Anna

Tuesday AM road 4 with Uta, 30:51 tot. 4

Wednesday PM road 14.3, medium long run, 1:32:56

Thursday AM road 4 with Uta, 30:23
                 PM Moneghetti Fartlek, did 3 mile warm up with Uta in 21:11. dropped her off at the house, jogged another quarter mile or so, did drills- a skip, b skip, a+c skip, fast exchange, side shuffle, side shuffle with cross, karaoke, 3 hop fast exchange and sensory hops, 4 strides.  Did a Mona fartlek on my normal glendale loop.  Covered 3.75 miles, .05 more than 2 weeks ago and this got me back up to the area I was finishing in last year, albeit barely, but still nice to be back in the normal range.  Basically I have a 2/10th of a mile window that I finished all but one of my Mona's in prior to last years stress fracture. I was into that zone by about 30 or 40 yards.  I mean on gmaps this is 3.9 which is right in the zone I was very happy with last winter.  So I'm very happy now to be back in that range. 3.6 mile cool down.  I did 6x6 dead lifts after starting at 135 lbs up to 185lbs.

Steve Moneghetti rates this Mona a "good job" showing steady improvement and working back to competitive fitness.

Friday AM road 4 miles with Uta, 30:08

            PM road 10 miles solo, 1:05:03, felt pretty good for a Friday night normally I feel like death warmed over.  I did 6x6 squats after starting at 95lbs up to 145lbs.

Saturday AM boxford road 10, 1:03:29, felt a little heavy.
                2PM 6.4 miles road, 42:24
                4PM bikram yoga, 90mins hot yoga

Sunday AM Race Super Sunday 5 mile, Cambridge, MA.  3+ warm up, 22:15, full drill set, Strides, 30 second hard effort, Race, did most of the leading which I didn't mind.  I really just wanted a sub 25min time and didn't care much about place today.  Not my normal attitude but for today that is where my goals were at.  At 4 miles the pack just rolled by me and I didn't have a gear to shift to.  I ended up at 24:50 in 4th.  I'm really happy with this for a bunch of reasons.  first 14 straight years with at least one sub 25. Second this is one second faster than I ran last year which is a huge return to running in my normal range.  The low end of normal but normal all the same.  Third I split 15:25 which is about what I raced a month ago in very similar conditions. Fourth John Schilkowsky, I raced him in early December or late November and he beat me and today he was 1:34 behind me.  Now maybe he has been hurt or he doesn't run in the winter.  That's ok it is just very nice to be the one moving in the right direction for a change.  Splits 4:55, 9:54, 14:50, 19:49.  Then did a 3.5 mile cool down in 25:31. Total 12.5ish

Summary 81 miles for the week.  One good workout, one good race.  Good week with a rough start, not feeling very well, not sick just run down and feeling like I was going to get sick and played it safe. Feeling very optimistic about being back into regular shape and having a chance to build up to some good racing in the coming months.  Hope you are running well. 

Training January 23 to 29, 2017

Monday AM road 4.25, 34:03, first 3 miles with Uta and Melissa.
               PM Raleigh tavern 10 mile, 1:06:58, felt good. 6x6 dead lifts after starting at 125 up to 175lbs.

Tuesday PM road 4 with Uta and Melissa, 32:03.  Felt really run down today and it was a cold rain.  I should have gone to the gym but it seemed like it was down raining.  I decided to scrap the workout and take a hot shower.

Run this one from last weekend again because I'm too lazy to take up to date photos.

Wednesday PM 13.3 on roads solo, 1:26:27.

Thursday AM road 4 with Uta, 30:36
                 PM 3.1 warm up, drills and strides 6x mile point to point on dale st. with 3mins recovery during which I would do 3 or 4 drills, odds were wind at my back, evens were into a pretty solid wind, I didn't check pace on the watch much, or at all on some reps, just ran what felt like 10k to half marathon pace range.  the point to point is not track flat at all but no serious hills either. Basically lightly rolling the whole way.  4:59, 5:06, 5:00, 5:06, 4:57, 5:09.   10 seconds recovery then 2.7 cool down, interestingly total distance was actually a tenth longer then the medium long run last night, with the drills included.  I was not really feeling doing a workout tonight so I was happy to get this done.

Friday AM road 4 with Uta, 29:37
            PM Raleigh tavern 10 mile, 1:07:17, 6x6 squats after starting at 95lbs up to 145lbs.

Saturday AM road 4 with Uta, 27:06 tot. 4

Puppy sitting round two

               PM at North Andover track, 3 mile warm up, extensive drill set, 30x100 with jog back recovery.  Averaged 15.7 with a fast rep of 15.4 and a slow rep of 16.1, it was windy but it was from the side. 3 mile cool down. 

Sunday AM 2.1 warm up with Uta, drop her off at house, jog 3/10ths to my start area.  Some drills- a skip, b skip, c skip, fast exchange, both side drills both ways, karaoke, 3 hop fast exchange, hopping, 1 stride,  15 mile fundamental tempo on figure 8 loop.  stopped for 3 hop fast exchange just after 8 mile split- a mile earlier then 2 weeks ago, to avoid losing coordination. Felt very tired the last mile, 5:49 average pace.  Fastest mile 5:40 (1st, 7th, and 13th), slowest mile 6:12- 9th with drills mixed in, for an all running mile my 2nd mile was 5:59, 45 feet elevation gain from start to finish.   3/10ths cool down back to house. total a bit over 18 miles.

Summary 96 miles for the week, three good sessions, though the 100's certainly are not a hard session more of a moderate, like a quality training run in terms of what they take out of you but mentally your not on auto pilot nearly as much.  The fundamental tempo is also a fairly moderate effort, my HR never exceeded 155 and generally stays in the 140's, came up as I struggled at the end today.  I think my max is around 200 to 205.
  Missing the workout Tuesday was stupid.  I planned on going to the gym but the rain seemed to have stopped so I changed up and did my exercises and headed out the door.  Perhaps a half hour had passed and it was back to a soaking cold rain.  I was chilled to the bone after a 4 mile warm up so I called it.  Very avoidable.  Ended up with a good week overall so not a huge deal but a bit frustrating.  I'm not a kid anymore so I don't like making dumb mistakes.
  A bit on the fundamental tempo.  As you may have noticed I'm measuring my runs with a garmin since Christmas. Thank you Melissa!!  I really love it. For the most part it turns out I have been running a bit more than I thought.  That said it seems when I run faster the garmin says I'm not going as far.  I mentioned the Mona loop last week.  With the fundamental tempo loop it is similar.  So according to the garmin I ran 15 miles at 5:49 pace. According to gmap pedometer it was 15.55 miles at 5:36 pace.  Honestly it doesn't matter much to me which is right or if it was somewhere in between.  That said it is important for me to recognize that when gauging fitness I have measured loops using gmaps for years so it is an apple and orange comparison to say "oh today I could only run 5:49 pace and back in the day I did 5:22 pace I suck."   So regardless of which measure is correct what is important in comparison is realizing I'm 14 seconds per mile behind my better efforts not 27 seconds per mile.
  Next this week I stopped a mile earlier for the drills then when I did this session two weeks ago.  I actually think this might be good news.  I have for a while believed that my shoulder mobility and weakness issues.  This week I added new shoulder exercises.  Basically reverse pull ups.  That said I'm sore as hell in my lats and shoulders and that I struggled to hold coordination in that state makes me think I'll do a much better job of holding coordination when I make progress in improving this area.   In the mean time I was very excited that doing the 3 hop fast exchange again seems like a complete reset. I think I would have made it to at least 16 miles in control which is awesome.
  Hope you had a good week of training.

Training January 16 to 22, 2017

Monday AM boxford 10 mile with Uta, 1:07:55
               late AM few drills and massage with Anna
               PM road 4 solo, 28:31

Tuesday AM road 4.1 with Uta, 30:19
               PM 3 warm up, drills- a skip, b skip, a+c skip, fast exchange, side 1, side 2 and karaoka, fast exchange 3 with 3 hops, hopping, strides, Moneghetti Fartlek covered 3.7 miles- 0.05 more than last time so an improvement.   I dodged a bullet on this one it was supposed to be sleet and freezing rain but it arrived late so it just started to drizzle as I started the fartlek and it was just getting going good over my last few efforts.  It was a cold 3.6 mile cool down to the house but two weeks ago the whole thing was in a driving cold rain so this was a nice improvement.

I should also note that I'm using a garmin now to measure in the past I used online mapping.  For the most part this hasn't changed anything pretty much everything is within a 1/10th a mile up or down from what the other measure said.  That said on the loop I use for the Moneghetti the garmin is consistently .15 shorter.  So on the computer this was 3.85.  This is unimportant except for comparison to when I have done Mona's on this loop in the past.  For perspective I was quite fit at this point last winter and was covering 3.9 to 4.1 miles pretty consistently on this loop per computer measurement.  So seeing 3.7 could be pretty frustrating as 3/10ths of a mile is a LOT of distance over only 20mins.  It is the difference between 5:24 per mile and 5:00 per mile.  Realizing that really I'm only running 1/10th to 0.15 less than last year is important in that I don't panic and think I'm in abysmal shape and not making progress.

 I must stress it doesn't matter what matters is the effort for the workout and for tracking training what matters is the comparison to past results.  IE you don't need to measure the loop at all you could just keep track of landmarks telling you how far you get.  For me I know if I finish past Mt. Vernon street I'm killing it.
  For the type A folks among you who need to know which is more accurate I would guess the garmin.  This loop is pretty hilly and based on my race times last winter while I was doing this loop regularly the performances lined up with being able to do a 4 mile Mona on the perfect flat but not over rolling hills.  To be honest in measurements I only trust a USATF cert. over the top steel tape and the full nine yards type thing I few everything else as ballpark.  That said the technology today has made the ballpark much much smaller.

Mona rates this fartlek a "would you please just shut up and run."

Wednesday Off day- semi planned.  Been right on the edge with training and work and this week has been a bit over the top at work, pretty much 10 hours every day in the building not counting 'homework'. So figured I'd take a day, either today or Friday

Thursday AM road 4 with Uta, 31:17, felt very flat after a day off 

                 PM  off, got home very late and it was Melissa's Birthday so no time to run.

Friday PM 3.5 with Uta then 12x12 second hills with jog down recoveries. Not a good day for volume but very happy to squeeze this session in.

Saturday AM road 7.2 with Uta, 47:21, 40 degrees sunny felt spring like.
                PM boxford 10 mile loop, 1:06:04, very warm 50 or so ran in shorts!

Sunday AM warm up with Ruben, drills, bunch of strides, one 27 second effort, race GBTC invite 2 mile, 7th place 9:15.91.  I was very pleasantly surprised by this one.  I though 9:20 was the absolute best I could hope for.  I planned to try and run 35 laps as long as I could.  Instead I was consistently a shade under and it felt very easy/smooth.  I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop but it didn't I ran hard the last 800 but I really feel like I could have run a second a lap faster just by being more aggressive. I really haven't done much work so this was really nice. 5.2 cool down with a group.

pic from Sunday by Mike Giberti showing me looking about as good form wise as I ever have.

Summary 66 or so miles for the week, 1 good workout, 1 moderate session, 1 race.  Not a great week volume wise but I hit the stuff that mattered so I'm happy with it.  Hope your training is going well.