My legs are slowly coming back to life...

My legs had a really hard time yesterday. I made the decision to push back the bike trainer workout by a day in order to give my legs a little bit of extra rest. It seems to have helped a lot, although I also worked them pretty hard today so they're definitely not feeling too hot still. Nonetheless, it seems like the lifting pain is lightening and it's being replaced with a different kind of fatigue, so I'll call it progress.

Today started with a run in the morning before my volunteering session and I took the make up bike trainer session in the afternoon.

Today's AM Workout: Base run, Forest Park.
Summary: 7.04 mi, 1:13:10, 10:24 pace.
Pace splits by mile: 10:35, 10:52, 10:36, 10:40, 10:00, 10:09, 9:56, 9:18.
Hit rate: 32/34 (94.1%)

Mornings are nice because it's not too hot. It was very humid today though, but my body handled that fine. I ran the route counterclockwise, which is the opposite of what I usually do, so it put the hills first (which explains the nice negative splitting). The run felt pretty easy on my cardiovascular system but was brutal on the legs. They hurt with every step the first 1-1.5 miles and then lightened up to just aches in specific areas for the rest. It's good to know that I can finish a run of that distance on really blown out legs though. Interestingly enough, when I ran this route in the other direction exactly a week ago after having had my legs pretty thoroughly wrecked by biking workouts, I ran a 1:13:09. The consistency astounds me. The effort was slow, but I'm happy enough with it, just proud I got out there and did what I had to do. (It was an early morning I really wasn't feeling, but I'm glad I did it.)

Today's PM Workout: Trainer ride
Summary: 18.6 mi, 1:16:22, 14.6 mph.

• WU: 8 mins easy, 2 mins base of a hill
• Main Set: bike sprints to failure, 5 x (6 min efforts, 2 min recovery)
• Broken as: 2 min 85% (base @ 100 rpm), 2 min 100% (+1, 90+ rpm), 1 min 110% (+2, 90+ rpm), 1 min 120% (+2, 100 rpm)
• 1 extra minute recovery
• Big gear: 4 x (2 mins steady state seated climb, 55-65 rpm, 1 min standing climb (biggest gear, c+3), 1 min recovery)
• WD: 9 mins at steady state then easy.

Speed splits: 14.1, 15.9, 14.9, 13.4.
Hit rate: 33/35 (94.2%)

The trainer ride was pretty solid all in all. I think I moderated the effort well, the last two repeats of the sprint set were tough but manageable (some pace slip off towards the end though). Big gear work is a must, will keep trying to get through that. The trainer workouts are tough but I'm sure they do wonders for fitness. We'll let the bike see the outdoors tomorrow and hopefully that'll be a good time. As of right now, my legs are still weak and hurting a bit, so I'm going to take some time to stretch and hopefully put them in the best possible position for tomorrow. Yay!

Much love,
Jess

Soreness and compromise

The rest day was not as relaxing as I would have liked. It was a pretty non-hectic day though which I appreciated. I still woke up pretty early and basically just chilled in the morning. Had a long school day (9-4) but a good chunk of time to stretch and take care of some chores and errands before dinner which was nice. I went to bed later than I would have liked, but it wasn't a huge deal. The main complaint I have about yesterday was that the gym wrecked my body pretty hard. In all honesty, I've had worse before, but even this is pretty bad. I'm expecting most post-lift days to feel like this, maybe slightly better once I get into the swing of things, but overall I'm going to have to learn how to manage with the soreness.

This morning's masters practice was pretty brutal. Our lane leader was really fast and the main set turned into a lot of "just turn at every wall" and I wasn't getting much out of that so I skipped a few things in order to get rest and try to improve the quality of the rest of my swim. I was pretty drained today. Between the continuing soreness and my inability to get any food in my body this morning, it was an exhausting ordeal. I did the best I could though and even with the skipped 300 total meters, it was a 3500 LCM workout, so I'm not going to berate myself too much. I made the best I could have out of a non-ideal situation and I showed up despite feeling exhausted and sore and under-motivated, so I will give myself credit for that and forgive myself for being imperfect. I have to remind myself sometimes not to accuse myself of always making excuses: real valid situations get in the way of your performance sometimes and what's important is to try and do the best you can given the cards you're dealt.

Today's AM Workout: CSP practice, IM day.
Summary:

• WU: 500 swim
• Pre-set:
• 4 x 150 IMO kick/drill/swim by 50
• 4 x 200 rotate 50 stroke IMO and free
• Fly/free/free/free, free/back/free/free, free/free/breast/free, all free
• 6 x 50 free @ :55, 2 fast, 1 easy
• Main Set: pace times were just sort of whatever we could do…
• 200 IM
• 2 x 100 free - I only did 1
• 200 IM
• 4 x 50 free
• 200 free - I only did 100
• 2 x 100 IM
• 200 free
• 4 x 50 IMO - I only did 2
• WD: nope, no time…
• Total Distance: 3500 LCM (3800 as written)

Hit rate: 31/33 (93.9%)

The plan was to do an interval trainer ride followed by a transition run this afternoon/evening but that's probably not going to happen. I think if I put that kind of load on my legs today, I'd be asking for an injury. The temporary plan is just to do the interval ride portion of the workout. Although I may swap the real workout for just a steady state ride (indoors or out) to clear some of the gunk out of my legs because they are still really hurting. We'll see how I feel as the day progresses and how much time I really have in the evening after school today. Trying to make the best out of what I've got. I'm proud of myself for plowing onwards despite it all. (:

Much love,

Jess

Playing catch up!

Somehow I thought that during going home, packing, driving back out to STL, and unpacking, I would have time to journal/blog. Um yeah no. So now we gotta get caught up. The past four days haven't exactly gone according to plan. But I don't find myself extremely dissatisfied with that which is nice. Here are the workouts by day:

7/9 Thursday:

• Had a run planned, but ended up not taking it because I was busy all day with packing and family. I did spend some time playing basketball with Coen though and hanging out on the playground and chasing people slash getting chased at the riverfront in the evening, so it wasn't necessarily an inactive day, which was nice. 
• Decided that the flexibility was good to have. We got home late in the evening, so I axed the morning swim because I was feeling honestly pretty beat up and the reality is that my overall health trumps my fitness pursuits any day. 
• I also decided that I should quantify the entire "I'm doing what I should be doing X% of the time" thing. I think if you're doing what you should be doing 80% of the time, you're in an okay place. I would rather be up around a 90% hit rate than an 80% hit rate, but I won't beat myself up over 80%. Lower than that and I think it'll be an indicator to me that I need to kick myself in the butt a bit to get moving. So I thought I would start recording these numbers both by month and overall.
• Hit rate: 3/4 (75%)

7/10 Friday:

• Today's Workout: 
• AM Swim - base work
• PM Run - 10-15k, build by halves/thirds, pace doesn't have to be aggressive but does have to be controlled.
• Summary: Skipped the AM swim, replaced with a run. 8.42 mi, 1:18:34, 9:20 pace. 
• Pace splits by mile: 9:49, 9:31, 9:36, 9:16, 9:16, 9:13, 9:06, 9:06, 8:42.
• Hit rate: 4/6 (66.7%)
• The pacing was bang on, I was really happy with the quality of this effort. I was pretty tired towards the end but not completely destroyed, which was also good. One of the longer run efforts I've had recently, without it edging into pure long run (slowly slowly) territory. Good job Jess!

7/11 Saturday: Took the day off, as planned, to drive back to STL.

7/12 Sunday:

• Today's Workout: 6+ mi base run
• Summary: 3.55 mi, 35:16, 9:56 pace. Ran w/ Henry, so distance/pace brought down. Treated it as more of a recovery run than a base run.
• Pace splits by mile: 9:47, 9:39, 10:15, 10:10.
• Hit rate: 5/7 (71.4%)
• Henry hasn't gone running in a while, it was hot, I don't blame him for this. Less of a real workout for me, but at least I got out and sweat. I thought about including a quality measure for hit rate, but decided against it because if I wanted to discredit weaker workouts (where I miss the target distance or pace or whatever), I would also have to give extra credit to stronger workouts (where I do better than the target distance/pace/etc.), and I really don't want to encourage deviation from the goals of my scheduled workouts that way. Some days are going to be unintentionally lighter (as we'll see for the Monday log) but I want to be satisfied with the effort so long as I'm out there and "showing up". 

7/13 Monday:

• Today's Workout: Long run, 8-10+ mi, easy pace (key session).
• Summary: 6.95 mi, 1:11:20, 10:16 pace.
• Pace splits by mile: 10:10, 10:14, 10:16, 10:14, 10:03, 10:16, 10:39.
• Hit rate: 6/8 (75%)
• It was 84 degrees and sunny, the heat was really rough. I was happy with how steady the pace was though, until the last little bit, when it feels like my body gave out completely. I was suffering way harder than I was expecting to and turned in for home early, didn't hit the target distance which was disappointing. I think a lot of it is just my brain holding things back in the heat, because the recovery was quick enough that I don't think the limiting factor was fitness today. Really just need to build up more heat tolerance and more mental composure and ability to endure.
• Also it's worth noting that I went to bed late on Sunday (had some wine and heart to heart time w/ Henry) and woke up early to return the Uhaul. I took a three hour nap in the afternoon because I felt pretty blown out. Probably a combination of already being tired and workout exertion. 

So now it's Tuesday! I have to bring that hit rate up so I need to make sure I get a run in this evening. The plan is a negative split 10k effort, I will probably actually split this up by thirds (easy workouts 9:30-10:00, building 9:00-9:30, threshold < 9:00). Really hoping there's time to get it done and still get in a solid night's sleep. AM swim planned for tomorrow, so the ZZZ's will be needed. That's all for the catch up post!

Much love,

Jess

The first workout!

But not really. This is definitely not my first workout. But it is the first I will log in this manner, so for that I will allow it to count as a special first.

Today's workout: 8 mile run, starting moderate and building.
Summary: 8.3 mi, 1:14:18/1:14:31 total time, 8:57/8:59 pace.
Pace splits by mile: 9:27, 9:10, 9:06, 8:57, 8:41, 8:38, 9:01, 9:07, 8:05.

I am in the lull period before serious planned training takes place, so really all I've been doing the past month is running (distance/workout details determined depending on how I feel that day) and swimming on the occasion when I want to mix it up. I'm currently in Boston (the run was along the river in Cambridge/Allston today), but will be leaving for St. Louis on Wednesday. Between making this first move and going back to Canada next week in order to pick up furniture, the training will be sporadic at best. But I'm going to make an effort to not lose too much of the base run fitness I've been gaining.

The run today was a test. It was conceived of as a build run with two steps at which I was going to turn it up a notch. Was really imagining the splits to go something like 9:15-9:30 range for miles 1-3, 9:00-9:15 for 4-6, and sub-9:00 for 7-8. But I got going early on and really wanted to try and push the pace so I adjusted to a very ambitious 9:00-9:15 for 1-3, 8:45-9:00 for 4-6, and AFAP for 7-8, which made the last two miles comparatively slow and very very very very painful. I'm glad I pushed the pace though, because I've been struggling at convincing myself to push the limits because I am afraid of pain/failure so tackling those fears is important to me.

I spent a lot of time over the weekend being really down about the state of my training, and Henry had said to me that I need to be willing to suffer in order to get what I want. Suffering is an integral part of the process and whenever things get hard and I take my foot off the gas I need to remember that the suffering is making me better. I really tried to dig deep into that message today, I kept saying to myself that I needed to prove that I was willing and able to endure this kind of suffering in order to get better. I also got sort of delirious towards the end and kept saying to myself that I had to prove my idiot brain wrong about what my body was capable of. (I was watching a Red Bull endurance video series in the morning and one research project they had going on was trying to figure out how to tap into the physical reserves that exist beyond the point which the brain allows us to push ourselves. So I kept saying that I had enough to keep going, my idiot brain just didn't want to acknowledge that, and I had to be the boss and push through to those abilities I knew I had. Maybe a dangerous mentality, I will acknowledge that, but it did work at keeping me pushing as hard as I knew how.)

I'm not happy about the fact that I died in those last two miles, but I'm very very satisfied with the effort. It was probably one of the most painful runs I've taken in a long time, I'm sure if you had seen my face on the way back in you would've understood. It was the kind of run that ended with me swallowing back a lot of bile. I really feel like I know where the "deeper" in digging deeper is now, or at least that it's deeper than I thought it was, and I'm going to try to channel that going forwards.

Not every workout is going to need to be a workout at this level of intensity (and it probably shouldn't, because this kind of effort gets counterproductive without proper recovery) but knowing that I have what it takes to work at this level when I ask it of myself is really reassuring.

Post-workout, I came home, hydrated, showered, started the laundry, and promptly collapsed into bed for a nap. I should have probably eaten something beforehand, but I was just so blown out. (Also had an early morning because Henry had a 6 AM flight to Florida to catch.) Mistake turned out to be problematic when I woke up an hour and a half later and was starving but so tired I could barely get myself out of bed to obtain food. I ended up heating up a piece of fried chicken from the weekend (we ate so poorly over the last weekend...it was such a problem) and am munching on it now as I write. I will have to go to Whole Foods in a bit and pick up some greens to go with the leftover lobster we have from Henry's uncle's restaurant. I'll probably also make noodles tonight because noodles are faster than rice. Or maybe I'll even pan fry some potatoes, because potatoes are good carbs. We'll see.

Tomorrow, I will have to finish packing (the state of the room is horrendous right now!) but I will try to get in a short recovery run (around 4-5 miles probably) since I won't be exercising again until Friday at the earliest probably. I'll be back tomorrow!

Much love,
Jess