Miler Method (Week 1 of 6)

Week-beginning thoughts: YAY a training plan. 🎉 But also... rain. Again.

Monday
Planned: strength + 2mi
Did: strength
I'd wanted to get in a couple of miles just to up my overall weekly mileage, but realize that since my strength workouts have been going almost a full hour, I really don't have time to work in more in that timeframe. So I stuck with the usual routine for Monday strength.

Also, I may have found ways to do my 1-mile race! I forgot that both the Greenville and Spartanburg Track Clubs host all-comers track meets through the summer months. Greenville's are on Tuesdays and Spartanburg's are on Thursdays... I'm thinking the Greenville meet on Tuesday July 10th is going to be a good "race" day for the end of this training cycle... I think there's a 800m time trial on the training schedule, so that might be a good Thursday event. Anyway... excited to maybe have an actual event/race to target!

Tuesday
Planned: easy 10kTuesday
Did: 6.21 mi @ 9:49/mi avg
Ran early downtown with Megan today - the air (and my legs) felt heavy, but we got it done and as always, felt awesome to be finished with it as the sun was rising!

Wednesday
Planned: tempo+interval
10-20 min WU
10 min tempo/5 min rest
8x200m/2 min (up to 80% effort)
10-15 min CD

I had a detailed discussion with my "coach" this morning via text about what exactly an "80% effort" was and what a "tempo" pace should look like. Since I really have no idea what I'm capable of on this mile, it's more difficult, but she's given me some guidance and suggestions that I'm going to just (literally) run with and see how things go / adjust as needed.

For today, the target paces will be:

• WU/recovery/CD = 9:30/mi
• tempo = 7:30/mi*
• 200m = 2@7:00/mi, 2@6:45/mi, 2@6:30/mi, 2@6:15/mi

*this is probably conservative, but just for this first time, didn't want to go full tilt

Did: mostly as planned, total 5.75 mi @ 8:35/mi avg

So. Many. Splits.

Well, it's no wonder this felt easy... you can definitely tell by my max. heartrate that this wasn't pushing too hard for me. Though if I'm going for 80% based on Max. HR... 0.8*(220-33) = 149... HAHA I'm well above that. That equation never works well for me anyway.

So yeah... the problem with treadmill running is that there's far too much lag time on the acceleration for such short distances. It works OK for things at least a quarter mile, but 200s? Too short. I'm gonna have to figure out a way to do this stuff on the track because this is just not going to get me where I want to go. Each of those paces is about 0:15/mi slower than what I'd set the treadmill on. I also had to skimp on the warmup / cooldown due to time constraints.

Eh, lesson learned. I did enjoy the workout and it made close-to-6-miles of speedwork fly by pretty quickly. Looking forward to repeating this again in a more realistic scenario.


Thurday
Planned: hill repeats, Short Track Race #3
10-20 min WU
8x hill repeats (30s) @ 50-80% effort
10-15 min CD

Did: 3.27 mi @ 10:05/mi avg w/ 8x hills
This was a shorter-than-it-should-have-been workout again due to time constraints (skimped the WU/CD) but got all the hills done and felt pretty darn good about them! 30s seems so short, but it's a quick burst of hard effort w/ quick turnaround on recovery, then bam, you're at it again.

My neighborhood has plenty of hills, so I'd switched the tempo+intervals for the hills since I'm WFH today. I did a loop, then headed over to The Hill I'd selected for today's workout... I wasn't sure exactly how long a "30-second" hill should be, but turns out I estimated pretty well!

Started at the second mailbox, ran to the driveway just over the crest.

I didn't do a great job of the "50-80% gradual increased effort" and instead just kind of went 80% the whole time then pushed it to maybe 90% on the last one. Felt GOOD. I actually mis-remembered the workout structure and did the 50-80% on my 200s yesterday. UGH. Again, no wonder it felt too easy. *facepalm*

My heartrate has bigger "hills" than the elevation graph hehe.

The hill segments turned out to be an elevation gain of about 23 feet over 0.07 miles, which calculates to a little over a 6% grade. Not too steep, but enough to feel the push.

Split paces based on avg. moving pace: 6:41, 8:03, 7:24, 7:57, 8:03, 8:31 (zzzzzz), 7:18, 7:10

So, pretty much all over the map. Oh well, it was a good run and got it done!


Short Track Race #3
Did: 4.95 mi mountain biking
I did not feel like "racing" tonight, but once I got on the bike I felt pretty good! Got 6 loops done on the race and was pretty consistent on my lap times... all were within a few seconds of each other except for the first & last loop (first one due to "traffic" of everyone starting, last due to tiredness). Averaged 9.8 mph for most of the race!

Friday
Planned: yoga
Did: 1.4 mi treadmill desk walk

Saturday
Planned: long run (5-8mi) w/ 10 min tempo
Did: 8mi @ 9:13/mi avg w/ 1 mi @ 7:17/mi
I ran on the hilly Lake Road near my parents' lake house for this run. I got out early (before breakfast, post-sunrise) but it was already soupy with the humidity. Blegh. Legs felt pretty tired to start out with, but eased into a decent steady run. I decided that since I was combining the tempo with my long run, I could get away with "only" a tempo mile instead of full 10 minutes. I decided I was going to do 3 miles, 1 mile tempo, then finish off the last 4. After I got through the first tempo mile, I felt pretty good and decided I'd "recover" for a mile then do another tempo mile.

Tempo and... interrupted tempo.

I started off on the second tempo mile then heard the sound of rapidly-approaching small claws on the pavement behind me. Turns out I had a small dog friend who decided to join me... I kept stopping and trying to get him to go home and keep him out of traffic, then eventually he got distracted by a pickup truck and ran off... but he was with me for almost a mile! Anyway, that threw my tempo plan off enough that I decided to just finish out the run at a normal pace.
Did the Big 5 stretches when I got back to the house.

Sunday
Planned: bike ride
Did: 35.2 mi @ 15.4 mph avg
Took the opportunity to do a road ride w/ Scott - was a great reminder of how much I enjoy the road bike! We did just over 35 miles through the rolling hills of the Lake roads and I was surprised how good I felt since this was my longest ride in quite a while!

Week-ending thoughts:
Enjoying being "in training" for something. :)