July 22 - 28

Monday: 8.03 Miles – 1:02:02 – Average Pace 7:44.mile

Got up early to get my miles in before work since we are going to the game tonight.  My legs felt incredibly sluggish for the first 3.5 miles.  Despite running at 5am, it still felt really hot this morning.  Normally I can manage with a shirt on, but I literally felt like I was suffocating with the humidity and heat.  The last part of my run felt a lot better. 

Tuesday: 6.01 Miles – 45:47 – Average Pace 7:37/mile

I don’t know if I ran fast tonight because I wanted to just be finished with my run or what, but I felt like garbage.  Way worse than my run yesterday.  My legs felt heavy the entire time, and had some nagging feelings around my ankles.  Regardless, I still managed to finish nice and strong with a 7:04 mile which didn’t feel like I was pushing any effort at all. 

Wednesday: 8.03 Miles – 1:05:04 – Average Pace 8:03/mile

Once again, got up early and ran the same route as Monday.  My schedule actually called for 10 miles today, but I just ran out of time before having to get ready to head to Oklahoma City for training.  The first few miles felt kinda blah, but I finished strong with a 6:47 mile which like last night, felt like I wasn’t pushing too hard.  I considered running on the treadmill and getting some vert gain tonight, but after training and dinner, I just don’t feel it.  I can easily get in extra miles over the next few days.

Thursday: Off

Friday AM: 8 Miles – 1:06:11 – Average Pace 8:16/mile

I really didn’t have any interest in going for a run this morning, but I forced myself out the door anyway.  There was a light rain when I started and I actually felt pretty good until about 3 miles in.  The sun started to come out and it suddenly felt really hot.  I haven’t really eaten right for the last few days after traveling for work and I think I really started to feel the effects at this point in the run.  Once I hit the 4 mile turnaround, I sat and tried to regroup for a few minutes.  Once I started to feel better, I set out again.  I made it about 1.5 miles before I had to stop and sit again for another few minutes.  I ran for another half mile and sat to cool off.  After that, I was able to push for the last 2 miles and finish strong.  My mileage goal for today is 16 miles, so I am going to have to run again tonight to meet that.  I’m hoping that my last two runs for this week turn out better than everything else so far.

Friday PM: 8.01 Miles 58:13 – Average Pace 7:16/mile

Very solid run tonight.  Ran what felt comfortable and this is what it was.  As usual, I pushed the pace a bit harder the last 2 miles and ended with a 7:00 and a 6:37.  All miles were sub 8.  Looking back at my training two weeks ago, that double day had 8 milers in 1:11:09 and 1:06:54.  I like that today my first 8 was done in 1:06 and the second was in 58:13.  I’m getting stronger. 

Saturday: 10.01 Miles – 1:22:48- Average Pace 8:17/mile

Set out this morning with the mindset that this was going to be a nice run to end my week of training.  Spent a bit of time before starting watching the live results feed on the Speedgoat 50k to get some motivation and got out on the road.  I really am missing the trails.  The intermittent rain in the area has kept me off of them, but I will be changing that next week when I go to Colorado Bend to volunteer.  My thought today was to run a new route.  I wanted to find a 5 mile section of road to run on that is reasonably safe from traffic. I found a pretty good road and was nearly 4 miles in when I approached a house that looked a little sketchy.  I looked straight ahead to see a very large Rottweiler standing in front of me.  We had a staredown for about 20 seconds.  He charged, and I retreated.  I really didn’t have to run hard to get away, he was too big to be too quick and seemed to give up after only a few yards.  I may have also overestimated his “charge”.  Regardless, I got back to the house at a little less than 8 miles.  I refilled my bottle and then headed out for the last of my run.

Total Miles - 48.09

Total Time - 6:20:05

The week started off rough, but seemed to end a lot better.  I think the beginning of the week had me feeling beat down a bit from the 30 mile effort from last Friday.  I'm expecting to spend quite a bit of time on the trails this week.  The last two weeks of all road running has helped a bit with my turnover which is good, but not good enough.  I will get the opportunity to run at Gateway a couple of times, and finish off when I volunteer at Colorado Bend this weekend.  My body feels decent as I write this report.  No real aches and pains which is good.  I kind of took some of the easy way out while running this week, avoiding the majority of the heat.  Oh well.

July 15 – 21

Monday: Off – Initially I planned to run tonight, but I didn’t get home from work until 7 or so.  Foiled.

Tuesday: 5.5 Miles – 1:04:43 – Average Pace 11:43/mile

Despite the cool and rainy conditions that greeted me as I stepped outside to go to the gym, I opted against running one of more normal weekly routes to go to the gym and get some elevation gain on the treadmill.  Once again, I was unable to use the incline trainer and it’s generous 30% incline because of the douche bags who consistently use it, but run at 0% grade.   As usual, I set the grade to 15% and hiked at 15:00 pace for 2 miles.  I really didn’t feel very good and I seemed to be dizzy or unstable for pretty much this entire run, especially the first 2 miles.  I then dropped the incline down to flat and put in 3 faster miles at 7:30 pace to stretch out my legs and finished with a .5 mile cool down.  Stopped a little short of my goal mileage for today, but I wasn’t too concerned about it.

Wednesday: 4.73 Miles – 59:42 – Average Pace 12:37/mile

Met up with Martha after work to run the Trinity Loop trail.  I didn’t really have any goals for today’s run, other than getting 4-5 miles.  Fortunately the weather cooled off a bit, but unfortunately, the humidity was at 89%.  I let Martha set the pace, and just followed along.  The trail is pretty nicely groomed and well shaded.  Some vert would be nice though.  The route we took went through the loop trail to the Woodshed and back.  Nice easy run.

Thursday: Off – I had thoughts of possibly getting in my long run for the week late on Thursday to avoid the heat, but after getting home, having dinner and settling into a board game with Christy, I decided to abandon that idea and plan for an early morning start.

Friday: 30 miles – 4:04:46 – Average Pace 8:09/mile

Woke up early and took my time getting ready, while still trying to figure out the exact route I would be running today.  I knew that trails were out, thanks to all of the rain that we got in the area this week.  I would have liked to have just run a simple 15 mile out and back, but I couldn’t think of a route that would keep me relatively safe from all of the traffic.  I ended up settling on running my 2 usual 8 milers a total of 4 times for 32 miles.  The first leg started off very sluggish for me.  In fact, my legs felt like garbage.  I couldn’t seem to get into a rhythm for probably the first 3.5 miles.  It was about this point where I was almost hit by the truck of a city water inspector.  I managed to get out of his way and flail around enough that he finally noticed me.  Asshat.  Apparently that activity got things moving and I had to stop for a quick bathroom break.  Fortunately, a port a potty was nearby.  Whew.  The remainder of this leg was pretty uneventful.  I made it back to the house in 1:07 or so.  I stopped to refill my water bottle and feed the dogs and remembered that it was garbage day so I put out the trash and headed out for the second leg.  This leg was even more uneventful.  However, I was feeling better and getting into a groove and thanks to a long downhill section followed by a lot of flat, I completed the second leg in about 1:05.  Christy was awake this time when I got back so I chatted with her for a bit while filling my bottles.  I then chose to change my shoes and socks, which were soaking wet from running through sprinklers.  The Brooks Ravenna 3’s do not drain worth a damn, and I didn’t want to suffer later.  With happy feet, I headed out for more fun.  As I was moving through this portion I decided that I didn’t want to do the exact some routes again, so I opted to add a few miles in CP Hadley park before heading down to the dead end at Risinger.  With the sun coming up and the temps quickly rising, I was going through my water significantly faster than the first 16 miles.  I stopped at the 7-11 for a Gatorade and a bottle of water.  I hung out here for a bit longer than I would have liked.  I opted to take the longer route around the block as my return, figuring that I would hit the marathon mark pretty much at my doorstep.  I realized that all of my splits to this point had been less than 9:00/mile and figured that if I pushed, I could beat my old marathon PR.  I tried to stay consistent all the way back to the house, and ended up at 26 miles even at my doorstep.  Once again, I had to stop to fill my bottles and use the restroom.  After the short break, I crossed the marathon distance at about 3:33:xx, which is about 9 minutes faster than my PR.  I am really happy about this, considering I was pacing myself to be able to finish 30+ miles.  I ended up deciding to head out to the end of the Candleridge Park trail which is a little 2.1 mile trip from the house.  After slogging there and back, I hit 30 miles at 4:04:46 right at the entry to my neighborhood.  I thought for a minute about putting in another mile to finish the 50k, but I decided I was satisfied with the effort.  I walked the remaining .25 miles to the house as my cool down and called it a day.  I’m really pleased with the result of the run.  I am confident that I can improve on the time in a race environment with more ample calories.  The water intake was pretty spot on.  Regardless of the hot temps and high humidity, I managed to lose only 1.3 pounds.  I might have this hydration thing under control yet.

Saturday: 3.07 Miles – 25:01- Average Pace 8:09/mile

I chose to go for an easy recovery run today after yesterday’s effort, even though my schedule called for no mileage.  I am really surprised at how well my legs feel today.  Only a little tightness in my hips.  Temp this morning was 73 degrees at start with 94% humidity.  Definitely felt a lot hotter than it really was.  I’m surprised that my “recovery pace” was the same as yesterday’s run.  I followed my usual pattern for long and recovery runs (5 min run/30 sec walk) and got home feeling like I just went for a nice stretch. 

Total Mileage: 43.3

Time: 6:34:12

I feel decent about my training this week, especially the effort on Friday.  I would have liked to have picked up another run today, but I need to remember to be patient and add in some recovery time.  This month will have my highest mileage total to date and there is still a ways to go until Bear.  I'm happy about the progress.

July 8 – 14

I decided that I want to get back into journaling about my runs to describe how I feel and see if I can track patterns in my training.  Here goes nothing.

Monday AM: 5.62 miles – 43:36 – Average Pace 7:46/mile

Drug my ass out of bed to get a jump on my mileage for today.  Schedule calls for 14 miles, but it is too hard to get that in one shot during the week.  I don’t want to sacrifice too much time with Christy, so on days like this, I will have to do things this way.  Nothing really special about this morning, but this was as far as I could get before having to head to work.  I just tried to keep an easy pace after my mileage the past few days.  6^th day in a row, so my legs are feeling it.

Monday PM: 8.01 miles – 1:21:34 – Average Pace 10:11/mile

April wanted to get some running in together and her schedule called for around 2 miles.  I took her over to the Trinity Loop Trail after work and we set off on a very easy run/walk pace.  For this portion of the run, I felt fine.  I am hoping that experiencing running on a trail will help to motivate April.  Once we finished the trail, April called it a day.  I threw my headphones in and headed off in the opposite direction on the Trinity Trail.  For the first 3 miles to the turn around, I felt pretty good, just keeping an easy pace and slogging through in the heat. (99 degrees at start)  However, once I turned around my body just shut down.  I think that I walked the next half mile just trying to recover.  I was really feeling a lack of energy and dizziness, which is something I am not accustomed to.  As I made it back to my truck, I realized that I was likely struggling due to the heat, combined with the fact that I failed to eat breakfast and lunch.  Definitely something I can’t continue doing if I am running 5-6 days per week plus lifting weights.  After I stopped at the store and got a sandwich and a Gatorade, I felt almost instantly better.

Tuesday: Off

Wednesday: Off

Thursday: Off

I had every intention of running today, but the crazy weather and power outage at work didn’t allow me to get home until almost 9pm.  Psh.

Friday AM: 8.11 miles – 1:11:09 – Average Pace 8:52/mile

Schedule called for 18 miles today.  I failed miserably on the first attempt.  Got started late and my body just wasn’t handling the heat. 84 degrees at the start and quickly heated up to the mid 90’s.  With the humidity, I was just not feeling it today.  I pushed through my usual 8 mile route and got back to the house for a refill on fluids.  I took a few minutes to cool off and stepped outside with the intention of hitting another 8 mile loop, but I found myself short on time.  Decided to cool it and thought I would run later.

Friday PM: 8.14 miles – 1:06:55 – Average Pace 8:13/mile

Tonight’s run felt a hell of a lot better.  Oddly enough, the starting temp was 100 degrees, but with the sun not burning the hell out of me, I fared reasonably well.  I’m not particularly happy with the splits being so inconsistent, but I gave it what I had.

Saturday: 10.05 miles – 1:31:27 – Average Pace 9:06/mile

Another day, another rough run.  84 degrees at start with 62% humidity was not what I would consider comfortable.  For the first 5 miles, I was feeling fairly decent.  My 6^th mile was pretty shitty.  I was really struggling along, trying to conserve my water in the blistering heat.  I got a second wind and made my way to a convenience store to get some more fluids.  I stopped outside for longer than I would have preferred, rehydrating and cooling off in the shade.  Slogged through the last of the run and called it a day.

Sunday: 11.20 miles – 1:23:23 – Average Pace 7:27/mile

Today was exactly what I needed to feel better about my week.  Until today, it felt pretty weak really.  Initially my plan was to go to the gym and spend 4 miles on the incline.  However, when I got home and the temp was 70 degrees and rainy, I chose to spend it outside.  I decided that I was going to run every step today which is a break from my last couple of runs where I walked some portions.  4 miles in and feeling good, I started heading back home and when I got to my street, I just kept on going.  The rain had me completely drenched and I was loving every minute of it.  I was feeling plenty of pep in my legs, surprisingly after getting into some higher mileage this week, and doing double days of training.  At about 11 miles in, I decided to call it quits.  I feel like I had some pretty solid miles.  First mile at 8:08 to warm up, and then no miles over 7:41.  I really didn’t push the pace at all, but these were just “comfortable” for today.  Now I’m hungry.

Total Weekly Mileage – 51.04

Training Time – 7:18:03

My only real curiosity about this week has to do with the benefit of splitting my daily mileage goal into multiple runs versus getting the long run in.  I would like to think that at some point, breaking the mileage into smaller chunks will help to reduce my chances of injury, and running multiple times during the day might help simulate the leg fatigue that I experience in the longer runs.  I know at some point, I better get some long runs in, but I hope this base building will benefit me.  Next week will be a good test, as I am planning a 50k run on Friday.