5/10/2009

I did not race this week but I got in 96.2 equivalent miles (63.8 miles of cycling, 4 miles on the elliptical trainer and 68.2 miles of running) and 2 good workouts. I really want to race well next weekend at the Bedford 12k, which is a New England Grand Prix race, so I thing that I am going to back off the mileage this coming week by cutting back on the riding.

Monday:

AM - 22.3 mi (1hr) on the stationary bike + 2 miles running (15:00) at work during lunch. This was probably the hardest I have ridden yet. I warmed up for 20 minutes and then did a fartlek type workout of 1 minute hard, 1 minute easy for 30 minutes. After I got off the bike I did any easy 2 miles on the treadmill to shake out the legs.

PM - ~5.25 mi (38:10) I stopped to run on the trails in the Massapoag Pond Conservation Land in Dunstable (maybe Groton), MA. I had not run here before so it was nice to get on some new trails. I felt good but got lost and went a tad bit further than I wanted.

Tuesday:

AM - 21 mi (1hr) on the stationary bike + 2 miles on the treadmill (15:00). This was pretty much the same workout as yesterday but easier.

PM - 5.2 mi (37:02) I went a little longer than I originally expected but I felt good tonight.

Wednesday:

AM - 3 mi (21:15) I just wanted to get a short, easy run in.

PM - 10+ mi () This was track workout night but instead of doing repeats on the track we headed over to a hill near the school and did hill repeats. Before the workout I was thinking that the workout was not going to be too difficult, but I was wrong. The workout consisted of doing 6 repeats of hills, where each repeat was 1 short, 1 medium and 1 long hill bout followed by a ~100m stride on the flat. The short hill was probably 75m, the medium hill was about 150m and the long hill was probably as long as 300m according to mapmyrun. Each repeat totaled about 0.75mi for a total distance of 4.5mi. I did a 3.5 mile warm up and a 2 mile cool down for a total distance of 10 miles.

Thursday: 20.5 mi (1hr) on the stationary bike. I was planning on going 90 minutes and doing a second run in the evening but my legs are pretty tired from yesterday's workout and I figured that I would be better off getting some rest and going long tomorrow.

Friday:

AM - 12.5 (1:34:04) This is the run that I should have done yesterday. It was an easy 12.5 miles and I kept my heart rate below 150bpm the whole way. It comes out to 7:32 min/mi pace. At the start of the run my legs were really sore, especially my arse from the hills on Wednesday. This is exactly what happened last week when I did a long easy ride the day after a hard workout and I had a horrible race last weekend to boot. I think that I am going to switch things up and do the long easy run the day after the hard workout as my regeneration workout and move any rides to early in the week. The ride may be fine if I follow it up with a run but I did not run at all yesterday or last Thursday. I do not want to experiment next week because the 16th is the Bedford 12k (a New England Grand Prix race) and I would like to run well there, but the following week I will probably do a 50/50 mix of biking and running to see if I feel any better.

PM - 4 mi (30:) I was really tired but wanted to get in an easy run tonight so I slogged out 4 miles on the treadmill at about 9:30 at night. Blah...

Saturday: 12.5 mi (1:30) I wanted to get in some decent mileage today but also wanted to give my hip a little rest so I did the old run to the gym, do 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer and run home bit. I got 8 miles of running and 4 equivalent miles on the elliptical trainer.

Sunday: 15.75 (1:37:09) Well, I was supposed to do the Medical Center 6k race today but I was just not feeling it. I had far more reasons not to run that I had to run (it is Mother's day and my wife would kill me, it was SUPER windy today, I would have had to get out of bed early, I wanted to drink a beer the night before, and the list goes on ...) so I decided to bag it and get in a good progressive long run at MP instead. Plus, next weekend is the Bedford 12k, which is a New England Grand Prix race, and I want to have a good race there. I was not sure how things would turn out, but I headed down to Mine Falls Park since I would get some shelter from the wind there.

I really wanted to get a good idea of pace and heart rate so I wanted to wear my Sunnto T6 with the foot pod for pacing information. Unfortunately, ever since the day I bought the foot pod it has not worked - any sudden impact will cause it to turn off so when I run it will turn off within the first 1/2 mile or so. I tried sending it back to Suunto last year to get it fixed but they said there was nothing wrong with it and that the tech who diagnosed it ran with it for a week with no problems. BS! Since the foot pod connected with no problems and only shut off when thumped, I figured it was a hardware issue (loose connection) rather than a software or wireless protocol issue. So, early Sunday morning I tore the footpod apart, re-soldered all of the connections, cleaned all of the contact surfaces and put it all back together again. Voila! It worked again without shutting off. I am sure the warranty is void, but what the hell. Anyway, I wore the foot pod and heart rate monitor on the run, although I did not calibrate the foot pod, and just went based on heart rate. LT pace for me is in the 170-175bpm range so I tried to work toward that and keep it there for 5-6 miles. I started out at an easy 7min/mi pace for the first 3 miles then eased into MP over the next three miles (~5:50-5:40 pace), which I held for 8 miles. I finished up with an easy 2 mile cool down. My mile splits were 7:11, 14:11 (6:59), 21:08 (6:57), 27:33 (6:25), 33:47 (6:14), 39:29 (5:42), 45:09 (5:40), 50:40 (5:30), 56:14 (5:33), 61:45 (5:31), 67:17 (5:31), 72:48 (5:31), 78:02 (5:13), 84:50 (6:48), 91:56 (7:05), 97:09 (5:13). I pushed the last mile pretty hard, but still felt comfortably near LT. The last 5 miles of MP work passed in 27:19, which is better than any 5 mile race I did last year, the last 10k probably passed in 33:55, based on my mile splits and the last 10 miles took 56:54. Even if the watch was optimistic by 2-3%, because it was not calibrated, then the workout was quite good. Below is a graph of HR, EPOC, VO2, pace and R-R (the time between heart beats). It looks like I pushed the workout a bit too much, based on the EPOC, but this was probably mainly due to the last mile being so much quicker than the others.