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.

IE Fix (finally)

I heard from several people that my blog does not work with IE but I did not know because I try not to use Microsoft products. I know that the site always works with Firefox and I have tested it with Chrome. Well, after quite a bit of time trying different templates, iteratively removing each widget and module on the blog and modifying the formatting, pictures and links I was finally able to get it to work with IE. I used the Developer Tools (hit F12 in IE) and first tried sending the page to W3.org for validation. There were 735 errors on the page so figured that I had to find a better way around the problem. The next thing I tried was disabling scripts in IE. When I loaded my blog in IE this time it did not hang but I noticed that my weekly mileage graph was not updating and when I enabled scripts the graph populated but IE hung. Bingo! This solved my dilemma about which graph style to use - I could not decide between the basic graph I had and the fancy Google widget that allows zooming and panning across different dates. I figured that the fancier plot with all the bells and whistles would cause problems but it was the other way around. So, issue closed.

5/3/2009

It is hard to believe that it is May already. I got in a total of 86.5+ equivalent miles made up of 6 miles on the elliptical trainer, 51.4 miles on the bike and 63.5 miles of running. This was much better than the last couple of weeks and I also did my second track workout and first race of the season. The race was probably the low-light of the week, but I am working towards a larger goal so this is just another mile marker along the journey I guess.

Just before heading out the door for my run on Friday UPS showed up at the door with a package from New Balance. My wife gave me a look like 'oh no, not another pair of shoes..', but I had not ordered any new shoes so I was a bit confused. It turns out that I had signed up to be a wear tester for New Balance either last summer or the summer before and I guess that I had finally been selected to participate in a study. Not too shabby - free shoes! The shoes are a lite weight, neutral model for mid-foot strikers. My first impression is that they definitely got the aesthetics right and it is a nice ride too. I like a bit more support for longer runs, but the shoes is really lite. My only real complaint is that the toe-box is a tad tight.

Monday:

• AM - 21.1 mi (1hr) On the stationary bike at work during lunch. I pushed pretty hard and kept my cadence at about 95+ rpm.
  
• PM - ~4.25 mi (31:50) Hard to say how far it was exactly because I was running in the woods in Groton and/or Dunstable. The trails were a bit rough because of all the rocks and roots but it was so nice to just run through the woods and not feel any pain.
  

Tuesday: 12.5 mi (1:29:33) I ran to the gym, did 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer and then ran home and around the circle. It works out to about 4 equivalent miles on the elliptical and 8.5 miles of running. I was planning on running a short 3 mile shake-out in the evening but I got caught in a meeting at work and did not get home until almost 10PM.

Wednesday:

• AM - 4 mi (28:10) This was just an easy run in the morning to shake out my legs and get ready for the workout this afternoon.
  
• PM - 10 mi (69:38) Track workout tonight: 2.2 mi warm-up followed by 2x800 + 1x1600 twice w/ half the distance in rest and a 2.2 mile cool-down.
  

I wanted to get a better idea of where I am in my training so I wore my heart rate monitor for the first time in about 6 months. I use the Suunto t6 and like it a lot since it provides quite a bit of information about how my training is going in addition to the basic HR info. The weather was phenomenal tonight since it was about 65 degrees and the dew point was down around 10-15 degrees. It was actually so dry that I had a hard time getting my heart rate monitor to work correctly since I was not sweating. I felt just okay tonight, not great, but still wanted to hit some decent times. I set my heart rate upper limit to 190bpm (my max HR is about 200-205bpm) because I did not want to push it too hard and ended up bumping against it in the last four intervals. The following table is a summary of times and HRs:

Bout	Distance	Repeat Time	Recovery Time	Average HR
1	800m	2:27	2:41	179
2	800m	2:29	2:45	185
3	1600m	5:09	5:26	187
4	800m	2:30	2:49	183
5	800m	2:31	2:56	182
6	1600m	5:04	-	185

The first two 800's were not too bad but I had to focus for the mile repeats. I did doze off a bit on the last two 800's, which is evident from the heart rates. The rest intervals started creeping up at the end but we were trying to keep the whole group together at the start of each repeat.

In the plots below the top curve is heart rate, the middle curve is EPOC and the bottom curve is VO2. EPOC is Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption and measures the amount of oxygen that the body needs to recover from physical exertion. It describes the accumulating training load. Based on the EPOC this workout was just the right level where I should get a good training response. If I had gone much faster or longer things would have been much different. I need to take it easy tomorrow and make sure that I recover, especially since I am racing this weekend.

Thursday: 30.3 miles on the bike (1:30:00) - This was just a recovery ride. and gives me about 10 equivalent miles. I was a bit surprised that my heart rate only got as high as 125bpm and averaged around 117bpm. That is hardly as high as it gets when I go for a walk. Oh well. I was also supposed to do a short run this evening but got caught up at work again. If this keeps up I am going to have to quit my job!

Friday: 8.25 mi (59:42) I wanted to get in a decent run but not over work myself so I wore my HR monitor and set the upper HR limit to 150bpm. I bumped up against the limit a couple times but it allowed me to have a good run and averaged 142bpm (right at 70% HRM). I am a little surprised by my quads are quite sore from yesterday's ride. I went pretty easy yesterday and just did a recovery ride so I am hoping that this is not a sign that I am getting sick (every one else in the family has a cold, and no, it is not the Swine Flu ... or should I call it Influenza H1N1). I skipped the afternoon run again. I have to get out of this habit.

Saturday:

• AM -9.1 mi () I ran the Derry Foothealth 5k and won in 16:28. I am glad that I ran this race to get the first race under my belt, but I felt like absolute garbage the whole day. The soreness in my legs from yesterday was much worse, probably because the race was early morning, and I felt like I had already raced a 5k at the start of the race. Before the start Michael Wade warned me about potential wrong turns so I ran the whole course as a warm up before hand. This paid off because I felt much more confident about where to start my kick at the end of the race. The race got off to a late start because they were waiting for a police detail who ended up doing nothing. This is pretty much par for the small races though. I thought he was going to lead the race but he just parked in the road and ate his donuts. From the graph of elevation below (from my watch - the absolute elevation is not correct but the relative number are) the first mile was pretty much flat or slightly down hill and we hit it in 5:17. There was someone right on my shoulder at 1 mile, probably Jason Porter, so I tried to push the second mile and drop him going up the hill. I think that he actually closed on me, although he never pulled even with me so I am still not absolutely sure who it was. As we crested the hill we hit the two mile mark in 10:55, a pathetic 5:38 second mile. Going into the race I had visions of running sub 16 minutes, but at this point I was starting to think that we were going to run over 17 minutes. I knew it was down hill the rest of the way and the breathing over my shoulder was very laboured so I put the hammer down and was able to run a 5:02 third mile to pass three miles in 15:58 and finally drop Jason. I finished in a modest 16:28. I did a cool down around the course a third time for good measure and was in agony the whole time. My legs were so sore. I am not sure if it was the work out on Wednesday, the ride on Thursday or that I am a big wuss, but this was not a good day. I am hoping that I got the bad race out of the way today and can have good races in the next two weekends.
  

• PM - 4 (29:38) I really needed to work the soreness out of my legs so I did a really easy 4 mile run this afternoon. It really sucked but I think that it will pay off in the long run.
  

Sunday: 17.5 mi (2:07:31) I started the morning out on the elliptical trainer for 45 minutes (6 equivalent miles) because my quads were so sore I could hardly walk down the stairs in the morning. After the gym I headed over to Mine Falls Park to run 12 miles with Kevin and Brian. I think that going to the gym was a smart move because I felt "alright" on the run. I was surprised that we averaged about 7:15-7:30 pace but my heart rate only averaged 139bpm. Rest and try to recover this week.

4/26/2009

This week was a big test because I did the first track workout of the year with the Gate City Striders group. Based on how my hip rehab was going I did not think that I would make it, despite my optimism just 3 weeks ago. However, I did the workout and was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out. I got in a total of 81+ equivalent miles made up of 10 miles on the elliptical trainer, 93.1 miles on the bike and 38 miles of running. Not bad, not good. Hopefully I can step it up next week if the hip continues to cooperate.

I was told that my blog locks up some computers so I did a little investigative work. I always use Firefox and it loads fine for me on any computer that I use. I am very leery of IE but tried it out on my main home PC, my laptop and my work PC. No dice. IE consumes 100% of the CPU and just starts hoarding RAM. I also tested Chrome, Google's browser, and it appears to work fine too. I will have to take a look at what IE does not like. There is some Java code (the Daniels' calculator) and some Google widgets (I think that they are flash based), but nothing real radical. Hopefully I can figure it out. Beware the Evil Empire!

Monday: 10 mi (75ish) I did 60 minutes on the elliptical trainer at a decent pace and then ran for 2 miles on the treadmill at the gym. My hip did not bother me and it felt good to workout.

Tuesday:

• AM - 20.5 mi (1hr) On the stationary bike at work during lunch. This was not too bad and I just wanted to give my legs a rest.
  
• PM - 4 mi (30:25) I ran an easy run on the treadmill at home while watching the Biggest Loser. I needed some motivation.
  

Wednesday:

• AM - 4 mi (?) I did not wear my watch on this run. I just wanted to see how my hip was feeling to gauge whether I would attempt the workout tonight or not. Felt good.
  
• PM - ~8 mi: 2.1 mi warm up, 6x800m @ 5k pace w/ 400m active rest and about 1.5 mi cool down. I had no idea what my body was going to let me do and if my hip would last for the entire workout so I started out pretty relaxed and gradually cranked things down as the workout progressed. The battery in my watch died during the workout so I do not have exact splits, but from memory they were about 2:36, 2:35, 2:32, 2:31, 2:27, 2:24. The first 4 were pretty relaxed and the last two felt good. I actually got out in 70 seconds for the first 400m of the last repeat and had to pull things back a bit. The rest intervals were just crazy long (probably 2.5-3 minutes) so it was easy to negative split the workout. I was pretty much fully recovered at the start of each interval. Overall this workout was a good confidence boost and lets me know that all the time spent on the elliptical trainers and the bike were not for naught.
  

Thursday:

• AM - 10 mi (75:00) I rode the stationary bike for an hour and got in 20.3 miles and then ran 2 miles on the treadmill at about 7:30 pace. Nice easy workout.
  
• PM - 4 mi (30:58) This was a really slow run on the treadmill after the kids went to bed. It is soooo much harder to run after eating dinner. At least I got in the miles.
  

Friday: 14 mi (1:54) This was a long workout but it was one of the better workouts that I have had in a long time. I started out by riding 30.3 miles in 1:27:28 (averaged 20.7 mph) down the Nashua River Rail trail and back Rt 111. There were so many people on the bike path that it was pretty dangerous riding there. Lots of kids swerving all over the place and cutting in front of me just as I come up to them. This was a good ride because I actually felt good on the bike for the first time. I was able to power up the hills and the head wind did not bother me too much. When I got back to the house I threw on my running shoes and did what I thought was going to be an easy 4 miles. I averaged 6:40 pace though (26:40 for 4 miles) and it felt good. Get some rest and take it easy tomorrow.

Saturday: 22 miles on the bike in 1:06:28 (20mph average). I wanted to take it easy today to rest from yesterday and I did not want to run so that I could try to do a long run tomorrow. I rode the same route that I did my long runs on last summer and fall by heading out from my house to the Hollis Applefest Half Marathon route and back home. The route was much easier on the bike, although the hills still sucked big time.

Sunday: 12 mi (85:33) I did an easy 15 minutes on the elliptical trainer before heading over to Mine Falls Park and running 10 miles with Brian and Kevin. I never thought about my hip the entire run, which is excellent, and felt pretty good the whole run. This was a good cap to the whole week.

4/19/2009

Man, I am totally slacking when it comes to posting my training. I am sure that my motivation to post is directly related to my ability to run. I have still been fighting this freaking hip thing and running only sporadically. I have been trying to do more running and get in as much cross training as possible but I never seem to make any progress with rehab. I am starting to think that the theme for the year will be cross training. Overall I can not be too disappointed with the way the week went - I was actually able to run. I got in about 77 equivalent miles and 37.2 miles of actual running. I spoke with Dan Moriarty about how the triathletes count cycling relative to running and I guess that according to Daniels you can count 2/3 the time. That pretty much jives with how I was counting the cycling (1/3 the distance) since you are basically traveling at twice the speed when cycling.

Monday:

• AM - 8 mi (60:00) An hour on the elliptical trainer.
  
• PM - 5 mi (37:50) I was not sure how far I would go since this was the first run in over a week, but it felt really good. I went really easy and kept the incline at 1%.
  

Tuesday: 8 mi (55:56) Really easy run today.

Wednesday:

• AM - (8 mi) An hour on the elliptical trainer. 8 equivalent miles. I just wanted to give my legs a bit of a rest to be conservative.
  
• PM - 5.2 mi (36:50) I went pretty easy today and felt good. My legs were a bit sore for some reason.
  

Thursday: 9 mi (64:00) Easy run through the woods into Sudbury from work. I felt a bit tired so I took it pretty easy. I decided to skip my afternoon run.

Friday: 12 mi - I ran 4 miles to the gym today, did 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer and then ran 4 miles home. Good run.

Saturday: 6 mi - I did an easy 6 miles around a loop at home to take it easy. I did yard work all day and just wanted to get in an easy run.

Sunday: 28.5 of cycling, 6 mi running - I wanted to get in a long workout but did not want to stress my hip at all so I decided to do my first ride/run workout. I rode about 28.5 miles on the Nashua River Rail Trail down to Ayer and back (I averaged exactly 20.0 mph). When I got back to the house I changed my shoes and ran about 6 miles. The ride was pretty decent even though I had to stop a lot to cross streets and for slow pokes on the path. The run sucked for the first 2-3 miles because my legs were so heavy and tight.

4/12/2009

This week was pretty good considering that I took all of last week off from running. I got in about 82 equivalent miles and 35.4 miles of actual running. I am not sure how to count the cycling so I just counted it as 1/3 the cycling mileage. Whatever...

Monday:

• AM - 8 mi (60:00) An hour on the elliptical trainer.
  
• PM - 5 mi (37:50) I was not sure how far I would go since this was the first run in over a week, but it felt really good. I went really easy and kept the incline at 1%.
  

Tuesday:

• AM - 6 mi (45:03) This was a really easy run on the treadmill with a 1.5% incline.
  
• PM - 5.2 mi (37:53) Really easy run today.
  

Wednesday:

• AM - (8 mi) An hour on the elliptical trainer. 8 equivalent miles. I just wanted to give my legs a bit of a rest to be conservative.
  
• PM - 5.2 mi (36:50) I went pretty easy today and felt good. My legs were a bit sore for some reason.
  

Thursday:

• AM - (8 mi) An hour on the elliptical trainer. 8 equivalent miles.
  
• PM - 6 mi (48:00) Easy run.
  

Friday: 68 miles of cycling - I rode to work today and since I did not take a wrong turn it was a bit shorter than in the past. I averaged 18.6 mph there and 19.6 mph home in the evening. I always have a hard time getting things going in the morning and it was also in the lower 30's.

Saturday: Off

Sunday: 8 mi (57:20) Easy run before Easter Sunday dinner. Nothing too hard, just wanted to get the run in. Same route as yesterday.