Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Training Update - May 12 2010

It’s funny how things can change in the matter of a day or two. On Friday I did a fartlek type workout of 10 x 20 seconds with 1 minute recovery jog between and I was pretty much done for the day by the end. Some of the twenty second busts where uphill, most of them on rolling terrain through the River Valley, so I was pretty happy with that, on review of the run some of the 20 second bursts where at 2:30K pace. On Saturday I ran another 36K run this time by myself as my running buddies had a different workout planned. I ran over the same course as last week only I felt very good, so good in fact that I managed to run the distance at a pace that was twenty seconds faster per K than the week before. Not sure what I was thinking, might’ve been the gel that I took with me, all that sugar going to my head. 

Although I’ve been reading that Carboom is supposed to have less simple sugars than most of the other gels that are on the market plus the fact that I only used it sparingly, it took me the time to run 9K to finish it, so it can’t be that. It might’ve been the fact that I’ve slowly increased how much I eat during the week as well as the Pizza & beer that I had Friday night J or it really was that point in the training cycle that has me tired.

After the run I took the young fella for a walk around the lake at Hawrelak park. He was pretty excited and a maybe a little scared at first to see the birds, ducks and geese up close but by the time we got most of the way around the lake he wanted to touch them. It’s funny listening to him trying to talk, everything was a bird, or a car (including the ducks and geese).

I took Sunday as an day off from training. Since it was Mothers day I thought I’d spend it with the family that plus the fact that I haven’t taken a day off from training in the last 3 weeks nor can I remember when I took a Saturday or Sunday as a rest day.

So far this week my running has been going pretty well, it feels very easy to run even though I’m trying to slow myself down as I have a couple of workouts that I have to do this week. Including a race pace run on Saturday.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

A Couple of things to bring me up to date (lastly)

Running and tiredness
I’ve been feeling tied again this week, and the weather isn’t helping. I wonder though if it is just that time in the training cycle were you’re just about to finish ramping up the training and start the peaking phase. There are also a couple of other things to take consideration A) am I eating enough to carry me through all of this training? And B) am I getting enough rest between running twice a day as well as getting in enough sleep.

With regard to A, I’m going to say No. I don’t think I eat enough throughout the day. So to find out how much I shove down my pie hole I’ll start counting calories. Apparently a man my size (6ft tall & roughly 165lbs – that was the last time I was on a scales, will have to get back on there to confirm) needs somewhere around 1600 Calories a day just to maintain the bodies functions, but someone of that size that also trains for Marathons should be consuming closer to 2800 calories a day just to maintain .....so far I think I’m falling short by about 800 calories per day.

For example let’s say I run at least 12K every weekday (a lot more on the weekends) and depending on the speed I run at I should be burning up anywhere between 900 and 1000 calories (roughly), so what this means is if you are just eating the bare minimum number calories and are running at this level you’ve removed half of the calories that the body needs to function and eventually it is this starving of the body will catch up to you and manifest itself in things like no energy (maybe I’ve just answered my own questions) If there is anyone with a medical or nutrition Background reading this feel free to add your two cents worth.


With regard to B, right now I’m feeling that tired that I had to cut out the second run of the day. So I am getting more rest between workouts but I’d rather be running twice a day. As most families with young children know you only get as much sleep as they will allow to get away with. In an ideal world we (the parents) would be going to bed pretty much around the same time as our children, so that we could get twelve hours of sleep a night. But we don’t do it....maybe it’s our fascination with Lost or Desperate Housewives or that there are just a lot of things to do that you can’t do when the little guys are around. I wonder sometimes how much we’d accomplish without TV to distract us now that it has become ubiquitous with modern living.

It seems that I always forget the lessons learned from racing the year before. It’s like once the new season begins my memory is erased and I’m starting over. Last year I recall having the same problems with my calves as well as having no energy. What never seems to leave my brain is the useless information. Which is great when I’m watching Jeopardy but kind of sucks as I forget important things like birthdays or how to configure a Router using the CLI. Is this one of the systems of the body not having enough energy to make use of those memories or am I on the road to Alzheimer’s?

A Couple of things to bring me up to date cont'd

My running
On Saturday I ran 36Kwith my training partner Marc, we left my place and then ran down the Whitemud Ravine until we hit the EPS Half Marathon course, followed that and then ran back up the Ravine. It was a great long run, felt pretty good throughout the run so I can’t complain much about that. I think Marc was running slightly better than I which is good for him as he’s running in the 5peaks race this weekend. Only one more long run to go.

On Sunday I ran a workout that I hadn’t been able to fit in during the week. I ran 10 x 800 and then took the same amount of time it took to run the 800 as recovery. The bad thing about this run is that I didn’t get going until midday when we put the young fella down for his nap. Then just after I got out the door it started raining which made the roads slick. As it was I had programmed the Garmin for 10 half mile repeats with a warmup and cool down, which made it 12 half mile repeats that I actually ran, I’m a slave to the beep on the Garmin. I felt great and flew through the workout, more than half of the repeats went slightly uphill on twisty trails around T Towne. I averaged 2:38 per half mile which initially I wasn’t happy about, but all things considered it wasn’t that bad.

I had a 11K tempo run scheduled for this week and since Sunday is Mothers day I figured I’d better get all my running in so that on Sunday we get to spent the day together. I started late (8:00pm) on the treadmill as I wasn’t going to risk a rolled ankle out on the roads after all of that snow froze, all I could run at my tempo pace was 30 minutes. 30 minutes you might say is not bad, and it’s not unless your plan calls for at least 45. So that was yesterdays running, today is a new day and you have to leave behind the training you did yesterday no matter how good or bad it went.

A Couple of things to bring me up to date

Chalk one up for the big guys,
This past weekend saw American Chris Solinsky become the first non African to break the 27:00 barrier for 10,000m this is a huge achievement. At the same meet Simon Bairu broke the Canadian record for the distance. What is also so great about this is and it looks to be a bigger story in the media anyway than the actual accomplishment is the fact that Chris is over 6ft tall and weighs quite a bit more than more Elite level distance runners. This is not to say that he’s a slob in anyway, if you look at the pictures of Chris running you can tell that he appears to have very little body fat.

So what should this tell us? To me it suggests that the preconceived ideas of what a distance runner should look like are to be taken and thrown out the window. I’m not saying a guy that weighs about 300lbs could run that fast, although those NFL or Rugby players can move pretty dang fast when they need too. It also suggests to me that Chris had people tell him he’d never be any good because... (insert reason here).... And that is something I can identify with.