The last two weeks or so have lacked any serious form of organized exercise. I’ve hit the gym once or twice and headed out for a run here and there, but no real concerted effort. It’s partially because I had family in town, so the usual routine was interrupted. I also had a mild cold for a week, so I traded my morning run for an extra hour of sleep on a couple of days - even though the day I did run, it really seemed to clear me out.

Feeling normal again, I hit the treadmill for an easy 3 miles today. I set the treadmill at an 8:00 minutes/mile pace and just kind of pounded it out. I sped up in the last quarter mile to finish in 23:48.

Actual workout

5 minutes warmup

3 miles at 7:56 pace

5 minutes cool down

Having completed another race, I bumped the treadmill up one more notch and ran my Monday morning easy run at 8:12 pace today. Actually, I felt good enough to increase the speed in the last half mile or so and ended up running it at 8:07 or so. Afterwards, I had a pretty good strength workout, but I had to lay off some exercises because of my elbow.

Actual workout

5 minutes warmup

3 miles at 8:07 pace

5 minutes cool down

Full body strength training minus arms

A few months ago, I read a book Chris Carmichael, who is most famous for being Lance Armstrong’s coach. Among the many things he talks about in the book is the idea of an easy workout following a hard workout to activate the body’s mechanism for clearing lactic acid. The idea is that you work just hard enough to get the body clearing the lactic acid without accumulating significant amounts of new lactic acid. It basically helps you recover faster from the hard workout. That was my goal for today. I had a pretty easy ride and I’ll be taking tomorrow off before the race on Saturday. With any luck, my legs will be ready for a PR.

Actual workout

20 minutes stationary bike at 20.1 MPH

5 minutes cool down

I went out the door today with the goal of completing four miles in less than 32 minutes. I wanted to do the first mile in about 8:30, then try for about 7:50 for the remaining 3 miles. As it turned out, I finished mile 1 in almost exactly 8 minutes. I felt great the rest of the way and finished with more than 30 seconds to spare. An interesting side note is that I passed 3.1 miles in exactly the same time as my last 5K race.

Actual workout

8 minutes warmup

4 miles at 7:51 pace

8 minutes cool down

I hopped on the treadmill feeling pretty good today. Sure, the legs were a little sore from the first long run in a while, but an easy 3 miles is no problem. I started out well, and really never felt horrible during the whole thing, but the legs got pretty sore toward the end. Still, I was able to up the pace a little at the end.

What I did next was even stranger. With my legs quite sore, and a race this coming weekend, I figured I could skip my leg workout. The next thing I knew, however, I was on the leg sled doing one legged squats. What’s even stranger is that, though they were hard, the squats actually made my legs feel better. Then, I went over to the dumbbell rack and powered through two sets of single leg deadlifts. On a good day, I hate those two exercises. How I convinced myself to do them today, I may never know.

Actual workout

5 minutes warmup

3 miles at 8:19 pace

5 minutes cool down

Full body strength training

I woke up at around 7:45 today and rolled over. My wife looked at me and asked “Are you running today?”.

“Yeah”, I replied, “I should probably go now”.

“Whatever” she said sleepily.

“Before it gets too hot,” I clarified.

I finally convinced myself to get out of bed at around 8:15 and I was out the door at about 8:45. It was indeed hot and humid, so I just slowly pushed my way through the run. It was long and slow, but I guess that was really the point of this workout so it’s all good. I took my two planned walk/water breaks, and made it the full 9 miles, but it wasn’t very pleasant.

Actual workout

1 mile warmup

9 miles at 9:49 pace

1 mile cool down

Last week;s 6 mile run was fantastic but this week was even better. I was basically trying to match last week’s effort, so I went out with the aim of completing the first mile in about 9 minutes. I did so in 9:06. After that, I just relaxed and pushed out whatever pace felt right. In the end, I took nearly a minute off of last week’s 6 miles. Very cool.

Actual workout

1 mile warmup

6 miles at 8:39 pace

1 mile cool down

Since I’ve started with speed intervals in my training, I’ve felt a little wussy about the walking recovery in between intervals. Sure, my speed intervals have been tiring, but something just wasn’t sitting right. So, I set out today to jog the recovery periods. I started out with the goal of running 6 400 m intervals at 6:00/mile pace with jogging recovery at 10:00/mile pace. I pulled this off for the first 3 intervals, then switched to 200 m intervals at 6:00/mile pace with the 200 m recovery jogs at 10:00/mile pace. I got 4 of these intervals in, then took a 400 m recovery jog and finished with a 200 m speed interval. So, 3 400’s and 5 200’s with jogging recoveries for a total of 3 miles at an average pace of 8:08/mile. Not too bad, though my wife told me I looked like I was going to fall over afterwards.

Actual workout

5 minutes warmup

3 400 m speed intervals at 6:00/ mile with 10:00/mile recovery

4 200 m speed intervals at 6:00/mile with 10:00/mile recovery

1 400 m jogging recovery at 10:00/mile

1 200 m speed interval at 6:00/mile

So, if you’ve ever worked hard in the garden all weekend, then tried to drink off the soreness with rum and bourbon, then perhaps you’ve experience a run like I had today. Something that is normally a very easy run for me turned into a struggle. I made it, though. I was seriously sweaty at the end and I felt like I was grasping at the air with my arms in an attempt to pull myself somehow to the finish. I completed the workout with some core exercises. Not great, but not horrible either.

Actual workout

5 minutes warmup

3 miles at 8:19 pace

5 minutes cool down

I got out of bed a little earlier than usual and headed out the door for a 6 miler. I planned out a new route for today’s run since my normal route is part of the St. Anthony’s Triathlon this weekend and is thus inaccessible without an official number.

Anyway, the route was mostly through various waterfront neighborhoods. Nothing incredibly interesting (the view of the water was most blocked by houses save the occasional bridge), so I just relaxed and enjoyed the sound of the birds and the fresh air. I ran along at a pretty steady pace and didn’t stop running except for traffic once or twice.

Actual workout

1 mile warmup

6 miles at 8:47 pace

1 mile cool down