My wakeup HR was 46 this morning and I felt great. I ran 5 miles on the Jordan River Parkway in shade temperatures of the low 80s (F), which means the sun temperature was close to 100 (F). I took 12 ounces of water and about 10 ounces of Gatorade and drank my usual swallow at each half-mile walking break.
During the first mile warm up, I ran a 11:30 mile. Then I ran about 11 minute miles for the next mile and a half. Then, on the way back, I ran 10 minute miles. This means that, according to my new goals, I ran a mile to warm up, and then I ran my recovery LSD pace for a mile and a half. Then I ran my comfortable LSD pace for the remaining 2 1/2 miles. Those statistics show that my warm up was actually more than the first mile. Because of the heat, I don't think I could have maintained the 10 minute pace for another 5 miles like I did on Saturday, but I'm happy with my paces today. A shade temperature of 82-83 (F) is a hot temperature for running a path with little shade, meaning I was running in sun temperatures close to 100 (F). Due to our high mountain elevation (4200 feet along the Parkway), the sun here burns a lot more than it did in New England.
As soon as I started running, I could tell I was stronger than yesterday, because yesterday I took walking breaks about every quarter mile and still felt tired, while today I took them at every half mile and felt great. I just needed that extra day to recover from Saturday's run. Drinking liquids while I ran this morning helped too, I'm sure.
Congrats on setting new heights and goals, you're progressing very well. Needless to say, be careful as you add new mileage and speed EVERY week as the new stresses can be accumulative. As you already know, I would incorporate a rest week after three weeks of increasingly harder effort as to recover for the next block of training.
ReplyDeleteHi Bruce,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your suggestion of caution. After our half marathon in April, I increased my LSD pace to 10:30 (later to 10:00), and I cut my mileage for all runs down to 2-5 miles to compensate for the increased stress from the pace. However, and this is where I have to be careful, I did increase my Wednesday or Saturday runs to 6-8 miles on days that I felt pretty good, still keeping my faster pace. I think I only had four or five runs that were above 5 miles.
As I just explained in a new post a few minutes ago, I'm changing my schedule to have Saturday as a heavy run, Monday as a light run, Tuesday as a heavy run, and Wednesday as a light run. On days that I feel pretty good, my pace will be my faster pace, but the distance will vary from 2-5 miles for a light run and 5-10 miles for a heavy run. I will only do one 10-miler each week, so the other heavy run will be 5-7 miles. I'm capping my distance and am focusing on my pace-goals that I gave in a previous post.
Of course, on days that I'm tired, all bets are off, and I'll slow down and run shorter distances if need be.
I appreciate your suggestion about a rest week. I agree but have to get over the mental part of actually doing it.