CIM Week 6: stepback week wrap-up

For all of you that are impacted by the early storms out east, I hope you are doing ok! 


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Thursday: 5 miles @ base with hill sprints called for by coach Jill..did this on the hilly loop that is 2 miles from my house so actually did 6.8@10:21m/m ...took it easy (except for the sprints). My foot was ok during this run but due to running out of time I was not able to ice it after, which was bad.


Friday: 8 miles with 6 miles at 1/2 MP (8:35m/m) called out.

Split	Distance	Avg Pace	Avg HR	% WHR	Cad	YPB
1	1.00	10:11	121	61.5	87	1.428
2	1.00	8:30	131	69.7	90	1.581
3	1.00	8:35	128	67.2	88	1.602
4	1.00	8:33	130	68.9	89	1.583
5	1.00	8:31	130	68.9	87	1.590
6	1.00	8:29	132	70.5	88	1.572
7	1.00	8:30	133	71.3	88	1.557
8	1.00	10:10	117	58.2	85	1.480
9	0.41	10:16	114	55.7	86	1.501
Summary	8.41	9:00	127	66.4	88	1.540

Some things to note:


1) We dipped into 1.6xxx YPB economy for mile 2 of the 6 at 1/2 MP. Yes! There is cardiac drift...not much but some: 128, 130, 130, 132, 133


2) I did this run at another local track, this one 1.4 miles from home. It's not a rubber track,  just  hard (and lumpy ) dirt. It does have a nice, smooth, soft grassy infield though. I ran miles 2,4,6 on the hard dirt and miles 3,5,7 on the grass. No difference in economy is visible. It was fun on the grass (and I think easier on my left foot).


3) I added %WHR (working heart rate ) to my tables just for Nelly. WHR is (MAX_HR - RESTING_HR)



In a state of Galapagos tortoise torpor my HR is 46, and my max HR (on a treadmill test in my Dr's office) is 168. So I have 122bpm of HR range for my waking life 8)  This is a more accurate way of looking at effort than just using percent of max HR.  (I went back and added this column to my previous posting too.)  If I am running at an HR of 120, then my fraction of WHR is (120 - 46) / 122...get it?



4) An 8:30 pace requires about 70% of my WHR. This is on the one hand, really great and low for me (yay!), and on the other hand...very dismal: good runners can run marathons at 80% of WHR...I can't (yet) run one at 65% of my WHR (9:00 pace).


The left foot definitely didn't like this fast running, no pain per-se but tender/sore feelings... icing after helped a lot. Tomorrow is a cross training day which should help recovery and Sunday's long run is only 13 miles and no paces faster than MP.


Saturday: 20 minutes stationary bike 10 minutes rowing, lower body strength training. Even with icing my left heel bugging me all day. Looked like I would have to abort Sunday's long run which was tough medicine to consider but on the other hand I really don't want to DNS at CIM so I'd rather be a bit undertrained than that.


Sunday: Played it by ear..I had some errands I had to do early in the morning and so decided to see how my foot was feeling before heading out. In the afternoon I finally decided it was good enough to give it a try. It was already 75F with full sun so I knew I'd have to take it a bit easier just due to that. The sched called for 5 miles@base, 7@ MP and 1 mile cool-down. I decided to do 1 mile warmup, 6@MP (before I was too hot), then see how it went. 

Split	Distance	Avg Pace	Avg HR	% WHR	Cad	YPB
1	1.00	9:58	116	57.4	88	1.522
2	1.00	9:23	128	67.2	88	1.465
3	1.00	9:11	133	71.3	89	1.441
4	1.00	8:58	134	72.1	88	1.465
5	1.00	8:53	134	72.1	88	1.479
6	1.00	9:02	137	74.6	89	1.422
7	1.00	9:17	138	75.4	88	1.374
8	1.00	9:47	126	65.6	87	1.428
9	1.00	9:31	127	66.4	87	1.456
10	1.00	9:54	129	68.0	88	1.378
11	1.00	10:07	130	68.9	85	1.338
12	1.00	10:02	128	67.2	88	1.370
13	1.00	10:01	132	70.5	87	1.331
14	0.05	10:15	128	67.2	86	1.375
Summary	13.05	9:33	130	68.9	88	1.418

I did ok on the 6xMP , but the HR were pretty high (+8/10 bpm) due to the heat. I stopped at the nice bathrooms on the trail and refilled my waterbottle and dumped a bunch on my head too ;) On the path for the way back it was cooler from a headwind but I still dropped the pace and took it easy. 

I bumped into Wendell from Coastal Trail Runs near the duck pond and said hello. Today was a Halloween theme full and half marathon...the half would have been perfect for me to do but with my heel, (not to mention my morning obligations) it's just as well I didn't do it. There's another event on Dec 18th (the one I did last year), but that will only two weeks after CIM so probably not a good idea unless I walk it ;)

My left heel did ok during this run...no pain but it was "there" and sometimes there'd be a sore feeling. Tomorrow will be the real test of how fast it will recover.

Ice bath for the footsy when we got home, in-out-in-out about 4 times with each time as much as I can stand. THIS WORKS BETTER  than any other method of icing. Cold packs, paper cups with ice in them, etc are all very well and good but sticking your foot in a pan of ice water works EVER SO MUCH better. Trust me on this, it's a bit of a pain to do (you really need an icemaker too) but I do it because it really works. 

N.B. I did not invent this idea...I read about it in Tim Noakes book "The Lore of Running". It would be great for any area that needs RICE, but obviously it's most practical for the foot or hand.

Ready for next week (we hope!). I have 3 more weeks before the 2 week taper....with two 20/20+ runs to come and especially lots of MP running I'll bet.

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In other news, you'll see from my "Upcoming races" sidebar that besides Berlin, I've also signed up for the Eugene Marathon in late April...far enough out that I can goof off a bit from running over the holidays and during some skiing in Feburary ;) This race gets good reviews and it will be my 2nd peaking attempt with Jill coaching for sub-4 hours, or if successful at CIM, I'll try for <3:55.

Note sure yet what's up after Eugene and before Berlin....still thinking on that <8/