Park Lake is real

Check it out, I ran 30 miles this week for the first time in a long long time!

Tuesday was a quality workout for sure. I did 6 x 1000m intervals at 10K pace. I figured I can probably easily do around 5:55-6:00/mile for a 10K, so I went at that pace. Do the math on the conversion and I came up with ~3:45 for my goal time for each interval. I ran on the river trail which is marked every quarter mile, and I figured as long as I'm between 2:55-3:00 for a half mile, then I can stop between 3:40 and 3:45. Well it so happened that I consistently hit that half mile at 2:55, and I felt strong on each of the intervals. Add in a mile warm up and cool down as well as 200m jog recoveries after each intervals, and you've got a 6.5 mile workout. Wow....there's way too many numbers in this paragraph.

Wednesday I did a short bike and swam. Thursday I did an easy 5 miles. And then came Friday....I needed to do a 6 mile tempo run @ half marathon pace, but I just couldn't figure out when I wanted to do it. I had to work from 10-5 so I could either do it before or after that. When I woke up, I decided biking was a better option, so I did 12 miles of that and worked. Of course, the sky got cloudier and darker with each passing minute and eventually by 4:30 the skies opened up.....and how! We were under a tornado warning and after all was said and done, there was some pretty good damage just south of here, like 10 minutes away. It's crazy because I can't recall the last time we've had a tornado touch down around here. It was just a short line of storms that went thru, so I ended up going for the run around 7pm on the river trail. The first mile felt great, mostly because there was some kid ahead of me who was going about the same pace, so it felt like I was sort of racing against him. Well, until he peeled off after 1.25 miles. The second mile was ok, about a couple seconds slower than the first, and then things just kinda started to fall apart. After 3 miles, I REALLY had to pee, and of course my route when 3 miles out and 3 miles back. Plus....I was pretty hungry. I had eaten lunch around 1:30 and had a little snack a couple hours later, but I poorly planned out the nutrition situation. So after relieving myself and trying to keep up my pace for the last 3 miles, my stomach was yelling at me to just quit, so I called the game at 4.75 miles and jogged in the last 1.25 miles. Add in a mile warmup to the whole thing and that gave me 7 miles.

Today I did 12 "easy" miles. Well it was like 11.7 to be exact but that's because I forgot which street to turn onto. But it was one of those grueling runs where you're tired and just wanna get it over with....then realized you've only run 4 miles. Yea. I also realized after all these years that Park Lake Road is named that way because there actually IS a Park Lake....who knew? (Apparently my whole family did.) The knee also is actually sort of barking at me a little bit, but I think that's because I did most of the route on pavement.

So that was my week. On other notes, my sister won a contest from New Balance recently....she got some free pairs of shoes and also a free entry into the Chicago Marathon. She wasn't even planning on running a marathon this year, but she's been keeping her mileage up so she's gonna do it for sure. It's gonna be her 6th marathon....how am I supposed to catch up to her if she doesn't let me catch up?? Haha. Also my coworker Steve is starting his own running blog and he's talking trash that it's gonna be better than mine. Well....yea he's probably right, haha. But we'll see who's laughing when I sell more insoles than him this month.

Run on!

Alive and kicking

Don't worry, I'm still alive! I've been swamped with literally everything since I last posted, but now I've got a little free time on my hands.

The running has been going good and the knee is feeling much better. The pain I had been having (see last post) was actually a product of me doing my alignment exercises a bit wrong. During the week of July 30 I only ran half a mile, but I had a whole bunch of elliptical work in there mixed in with some biking and swimming. The same goes for the week of August 6, but that week I was able to get 15 miles of actual running in. This week culminated in 23 miles. I don't think I mentioned it yet but I'm following the half-marathon training plan they had in last month's Runner's World, so on Tuesday I tried 2 miles at 10K pace, 2x1 mile at 5K pace, and 2x800m at slightly faster than 5K pace with some recovery time in between each of those. Sounded good to me, but the problem was my calves weren't ready for it. This new running form stresses the muscles more than the bones, and the soreness was amplified due to the actual running I didn't do a couple weeks before that. So I stopped after the 2 miles....add in a mile warm-up and cool down and that gave me 4 miles.

Wednesday the calves actually felt much better, but I went swimming anyway and had a real good workout. Thursday I was to do a 25 minute hard tempo run....and it SUCKS to do those in the summer time. I went at about 10am but the sun was already well up and sort of angry. I only made it about 19 minutes before I had to call it quits and cool down the rest of the way, but during those 19 minutes I was hauling at 5:55/mile.

I swam again on Friday and capitalized on the good workout I had two days before. The pool I swim at is olympic size (50m long) and previously I had only been able to make it two full laps (200m) freestyle before I was just about dead. I've slowly been realizing that I've been using my legs too much and my arms too little....so I fooled with my stroke a little during this workout and was able to go 400m with a 3-5 second break when I hit the wall every 50m. That made me pretty happy though because I've come a looooong way since March. And it gives me that much more confidence of doing a triathlon in the future.

Yesterday was a heck of a run! I went 10 miles, the first 6 of which were at an easy pace....which happened to be like 7:15-7:20/mile. But then the last 4 were supposed to be at half-marathon pace plus 20-30 seconds. The training plan calls this a race simulation run. So...during the run I was thinking that 6:20 pace during the half-marathon sounds good....I mean, I've ran 6:10-6:15 pace during a 10 mile race and felt like I had some energy left in the tank, so I don't think 6:20 for 13.1 miles is setting the bar too high. Ok well maybe a little....but I ended up doing those last 4 miles around 6:40 pace and felt REALLY good. The only bad part is that I was really sore today but that's the product of working hard. Today I biked 6 miles and also jogged an easy 4 miles as well.

Oh yea, and because my knee was hurting me a couple weeks ago, I ended up not doing the Leg It For Life 5K that I was planning on doing last weekend as my comeback race. I felt it was better to be even more patient and not rush back. I know I'm definitely running the half-marathon, which is the 11th race in the 12 race Playmakers race series, but I'm thinking of also running the Playmakers Autumn Classic 8K two weeks before that...which is the 10th race in the series. It's a pretty awesome and scenic race that goes around Lake Lansing, so we'll see how I feel.

Well I think I blabbered enough to make up for 3 weeks of not posting.

"I went a little too hard the first mile and paid for it. I was trying to run 4:40 pace, and went 4:30, 5:00 and whatever the third mile was." --Grant Robison, winner of the Leg It For Life 5K in 14:51