(Sunday, December 20th - Wednesday, December 30th)
Portland's "famous" Clone Santas
photo credit: Jess Murphy
Despite really good volume and decent ancillary work for the past eight weeks or so, I've yet to have a workout where I've felt that I really nailed and have developed some fitness. Talking through this with Declan and we're both convinced that I just need to keep plugging away with regular workouts and sooner or later the fitness will come back around. We both enjoyed reviewing Noah Droddy's training log leading into his breakthrough 2:09:09, 2nd place finish at The Marathon Project. A few takeaways 1) his workouts weren't particularly "fancy" just hard efforts every 4 days or so and equally important 2) he would adjust workouts saying things like "I was starting to redline earlier than I thought, so switched and took more rest." (04 Nov 2020) and "Anyway, I signed up for the race thinking I needed a confidence boost, but I don’t really feel like that anymore, so no harm done. 12 mile fartlek 6-4-2 w 2 rest." (26 Nov 2020). More support for including a little bit of flexibility and just putting in regular old hard work.
Run and recover from my key workouts
There's a lot to cover in this eleven day block which included my biggest Monday through Sunday stretch of the calendar year (88 miles from Monday, December 21st-Sunday December 27th). I adjusted my planned workouts quite a bit to include a few unplanned additions:
- Got in a bonus, cookie-exchange group strength workout on Monday, the 21st
- Tim and I took another swing at a sub-5 minute mile, but it was not meant to be. We ended up running slower in dark, slick conditions on Wednesday. I had planned on getting in some 1k reps following our attempt, but bailed when I was having trouble mantaining faster than marathon pace despite wearing spikes. It warmed up later in the day and I ended up meeting up with Dan Lenski for another workout which ended up going pretty well: 4 miles alternating between 5:40/mi and 6:10/mi every half mile. While one good or bad workout doesn't make or break a cycle, it feels good to get in a solid workout.
- Needless to say, I needed some decent recovery following the first half of the week, fortunately, due to Christmas holidays, I was off the remainder of the week. Ultimately, I was able to get in a couple good medium long runs: one to visit the Clone Santas on Christmas Eve followed by lifting and one on Wildwood to test the legs a bit and close the week with a solid, but not spectacular 7 miles around 6:08/mi.
We were fortunate to enjoy some clear days, here's the view at the turnaround on my 7 mile tempo and from Pittock the day following
1) No mindless miles, consider strength (20-30min strength sessions twice per week, 20 pushups daily) or flexibility/mobility work instead. 2) Grow enjoyment and desire to fuel and hydrate well, specifically, two servings of greens and eight glasses of water daily. 3) Grow in disciplined seven hours of sleep daily. 4) Daily flexibility and mobility following runs.
- I added a third consecutive week of twice per week strength work thanks to a couple "special" group workouts. I did struggle a bit with my pushup challenge as my focus shifted a bit towards running and enjoying my holiday time off.
- I didn't end up tracking my hydration. It definitely didn't improve over these eleven days, but I don't think suffered much either. Side note, I did eat a lot more processed sugar than normal following our cookie exchange and over the holiday weekend in general. I also bought a bunch of sugary cereal for some reason. I've worked my way through most of this stuff and am ready to get back on track with minimal processed sugar.
- My sleep has been okay, not terrible, but not great. I've been pretty good at going to bed when I'm feeling tired, but have been waking up in the middle of the night for varying intervals.
- On the flexibility and mobility front, I could tell I was just doing the bare minimum. I was spending a lot of time working out to the point this ancillary work felt like excess. I'd like to continue working on shifting my mindset to consider this work as crucial to the process. With this in mind, I probably should reduce my mileage a bit to make sure I'm not disengaged when it comes to ancillary work.
Thanks for reading!