Sunday 013011

This is excellent listening. Eyles podcast is definitely one of my favorites. While I have not kept a food log this week, this podcast was timely for me as I continue to consider how I eat, fuel and drug myself. the connections that Kessler draws between food and athletic cues (and addictions) are significant. For what it is worth, we also went to church this AM where the sermon was on gluttony. The universe may be trying to tell me something …

Bill W does a winter Pikes trip and Rickey does a marathon at the pole.

AM – mill again – 7 miles. 3 miles at 11.5 percent grade, 3 at 6.5 and then 1 at 1.5. TZ asked me how my knee felt. I am at that point where I can’t really tell if it still feels a bit tweaked and I ought to be careful or if I am just hyper conscious of it because I tweaked it earlier this week. In other words, if nothing had happened earlier this week, I probably would think nothing of what I feel there now. But as something did happen, I will continue to baby it. And while I have been describing it as a knee thing, it is really more a strain of the tendon connecting the hamstring, so a hamstring tendonitis.

Oh yeah, more silly observations from the mill: generally speaking my “easy” efforts seem to correlate to the mill’s feedback that I am using 900 cals an hour. That is the general threshold line right now. Above that and it is getting to be a bit more than easy and below that is easier. I realize that this is a bit of BS number, because it is figuring this out based on my weight, speed and incline around some industry average. But that said, if it is a stable calculation, then I can also look at this and see if the number changes at similar HRs down the road. Or not. I think I have seen other psuedo equivalent calculations on hotel mills called METS.

Week = 50 miles, 9.5 hours (I also got another 1:50 of biking in). Given the knee issue mileage was down of course, and then given the turn to the mill, vertical was up. 13885 vertical on the week, which was greater in one week than I had done thus far this year.
Month and Year = 3188 miles, 50.25 hours, 27500 ascending feet.

In regards to next week’s racing, it is hard for me to formulate a plan around that right now – as I just want to be able to run hard at all. And that may not be an option. That would be a bummer if I could not race, but we will take it day to day. Truly my mind has shifted from being a scorer on the team to running healthy again.

Shots from the Pinewood Derby …

In the comments I noted that my build up to San Diego was a total botch job. That is true. I got a good jump on it with a couple of 5ks in near Thanksgiving, but then I failed to do the regular turn over workouts to move forward on that. Instead, in December, I ended up thinking more about miles to reach 4100 versus doing 800 meter repeats. Yeah, some of December was because of the natural “distraction” of life, but I clearly did not execute any significant focus towards prepping for a faster 8k (Justin does a quick CO prelude of the SD race over here). I started (finally) to get the message after the Oatmeal 5k (along with hearing it appropriately from Nick and Footfeathers) but only managed one decent workout before messing myself up last week. The mess up last week was a bit of stupidity too … the 20 I did last Sunday was fine, but I ran a bit more than I should have the following day. I could hear the leg barking a bit on that run, but I decided to overlook it and press on. I paid for that in the rest of the week.

In any case, January is a wrap, and San Diego will be what it is (and I am still actually hoping that I can run hard – I am not sure of that yet). I have been able to continue to meet my goal of getting an hour of alternative exercise every week – and I am going to continue that, and if possible ramp into a more structured weight lifting program.

As the days get a bit longer, I also do need to get my head back around waking up early and getting some training in before “the day.” This habit is good for a variety of reasons, including “getting it done,” but also making it so that I am ready to beat the heat in the summer months. I tend to lax off on this in the winter months with the colder darker days.

I have done okay with the food log goal that I had for January, but admittedly lost motivation around it when my leg went south last week. That there is an interesting observation. Training begets training. Good habit beget other good habits. One goes south and the rest of the house of cards start to fall … in any case, I am going to try to continue to educate myself about food choices for greater consciousness in what I fuel and drug my body with. I realize this is not a “SMART” objective and so it is a bit namby pamby – but it is where I am at on the journey there now. In some regards, I guess it is similar to some other things I am educating myself on … guitar, Buddhism … I don’t have hard and fast objectives about these things but I am wading in the waters of education (albeit, all my education is slow).

My objectives for February in terms of running include in priority order, at least at this point:

1.) get this leg healthy,
2.) survive Nationals (see number 1)
3.) Ramp up the mileage and the vertical,
4.) continue to engage in regular harder sessions with Jason and Aaron
5.) continue the alternative exercise goal, and
6.) continue to explore healthier eating.

So yeah, in priority order, up the miles, up the vertical and start to include some regular injections of quality in there – assuming I have a good foundation to run on. The regular inclusion of some level of quality work aligns well with later summer goals, the approach the Incline Club takes, and frankly is fun. I felt super jazzed after the walloping I took earlier this month at Balch with Jason Jason and Aaron. I ain’t look to kill these … just regular pushes over the easy stuff that will make up the other 90 percent I do.