benrunschicago

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Day 3 run

D-204

Brutally hot. Started at 10:00 am and finished at 11. 92*

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Day 2 part 2

Got out there and ran again. I was inspired by watching the great Clayton Young training series on YouTube. It felt not too bad, legs a bit sore from the first workout yesterday but it went away. It was easy to keep it easy. Goal is to get to 30 miles this week, and if I didn’t go out it would have been a lot harder to do that with just three days left in the week, but now with this run I hit 10 for the week, so that’s 2 days of 5 and one of 10.

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Day 2

Yesterday was my first run workout (faster than easy miles). But I've been doing four weeks of weight training, at the minimum doing deadlifts.

Today I did

The bar + 25 x 10

+35 x 8

+25 x 6, 6, 6.

Deadlift comes to me naturally well so long as I keep it up. The goal is to get to doing sets of 300+.

I ordered Shokz Open Swim headphones with bone conduction that you can use underwater for when I swim long workouts, one hour plus. And they came and I bought $50 worth of music on Bandcamp, loaded it up, and I'm very pleased! And the great thing is I can use them while on the treadmill too, so this is all positive. I picked the ones that you load manually because the Open Swim Pro has bluetooth and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to turn that off completely (I don't want radiation at all). This is actually great because I like to run without my phone, but I don't want wireless headphones, so this solves that well.

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First workout of the year

First I swam 500 km using the hand paddles.

Did half mile repeats at 7mph pace at 8:34. I first started thinking "I'll put it on 7 mph and hang on for 20 minutes to do a tempo workout." And then at about .3 mile, I realized this is harder than I expected and so I knew I could hit 0.5 mile with it being the right amount of strain.

So I ended up doing 1 mile warm up at 4.5 mph, then 0.5 mile at 8:34 pace, walk .1, repeat 4 times. Then another mile cooldown for a total of 4.4 miles in about 55 minutes.

When I got home I saw that the Shokz Open Swim headphones came that I ordered, so I can load music and try to swim with them tomorrow. I liked the paddles, I could feel my freestyle stroke strongly in my triceps on the second half of the follow-through.

I don't understand how I became so bad at running but doing the first workout feels good. I will do the same thing each week another month with slow easy runs then I'll start to add shorter sprints or 20 minute tempo runs. The rest of the workday I felt pumped and energetic and then now that I'm home I'm crashing and my head hurts.

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Starting over. I had to lose fifteen pounds for the Army weigh in and I did it but I’ve had no energy whatsoever for any exercise. But tonight I got to our hotel and even though it was 730 pm I went down and did an hour on the treadmill. I originally started. At 4.8 pace but my heart rate went too high so I dropped it down to 4.5, or 13’20” pace. Damn slow which means I’m damn out of shape.

I’ve been inspired seeing Sage Canaday run so well two years after his pulmonary embolism, and I’m mostly decided to stick with the Army band as a career, so I feel now I can really put in the time to run everyday and not have other studying that I need to worry about when the weekend comes or at lunch or in the evenings. And I maybe made a deal that if I sign another multi year contract with the Army then I’ll be allowed to buy a treadmill 😋

So here’s to new beginnings!

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Finished the Chicago marathon in 6:08. I did the same pace as a long easy run, and walked/ran the second half. The main thing is I got busy, got fat, got slow. I learned a lot about running in this time, now being around all the people with their Boston jackets makes me motivated to really do the stuff and get fast.

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3rd day

First real workout of the Higher Running BQ 'all in' plan. Only thing so far on the plan I missed is I cut the cool-down run from 2 miles down to 0.5 miles because I felt guilty being at home. But I've done all the foam rolling and mobility and have hit the higher end of all the range.

Today's workout was 4 x 5 minutes at tempo pace. All week I was worried after I messed up something in my ankle on Sunday (from walking! oh the irony!) but I still hit the workouts and felt stronger each day. Today it was barely on my mind, even though this was the workout in which I had previously been afraid I'd go too hard and make it worse. Movement can be medicine, so I'm glad I handled it well. The two mile jog prior to the workout helped because I got on the treadmill and my legs were very stiff and sore, but once I finished the two miles I was ready to go.

I tried to find the right pace, and was off. I first put it on 7:00, then 7:30, and finally 8:00/mi pace. I tried to find a pace I could keep four times for five minutes with only one minute jogging in between. It was very hard to do at 08:00 pace. I knew I could complete, but each one was struggle and I struggled through each rep by focusing on individual :30 blocks.

Anyway, still in the game feeling good and if this first week is any indication it looks like I should be able to follow the program. It's the third day and I hit 18.5 miles already for the week (7, 6, and 5.5). The rest of the week is 7, 12, 8 and a rest. Their weekly total puts those doing the upper end at 48, it looks like for me I'll be at 45.5 (18.5 + 27). Maybe tomorrow I'll add in the 1.5 that I cut off this evening because I was homesick and worried being gone 90 minutes after work had ended.

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1st day done

Did 7 miles in 1:30, 12:30 pace. Today was strange because the side of my ankle started feeling tight and uncomfortable last night when we walked around the neighborhood, and as I started limping that aggravated instead of helping.

So today I did extra foam rolling there--the HR plan has foam rolling, stretching and glute activation every day--and  I had the thought: ok, walking does not feel good, but that doesn’t mean running will make it feel bad. The plan for today was 5-7 miles, so instead of getting upset that the first day of the plan was doomed, and that meant the whole plan is doomed, I just said, “I will see how it feels the first mile, and if it’s fine then I keep going. I have enough experience to know that there are some running pains that are deal breakers and other ones you can live with. But before I despair, let’s see how it goes.”

So I foamed, stretched, and then gingerly started running. And yes, after five akward minutes it felt like it always did. So my C goal was accomplished, I can run! My B goal was to finish the 5 miles, the lower amount required by the plan, and then I’d see how I felt when I got there. I got there feeling strong, hitting 5.0 in 59 minutes, which to me is quick for an easy run, so I went on to try and hit my A goal, which was to finish the 7 miles.

And that’s what I did. Later we went to the pool and I experimented with manipulating my leg in ways that might loosen up my ankle and I did some calf raises with my toes pointed in different directions. Movement can be medicine, so we will see tomorrow how it goes. The point is the plan started, I hung in there without despairing, and tomorrow will be 5-6 easy miles again, so I have time for the ankle to get better before the first workout in two days. Thinking positively like this will help, so that I don’t let a week pass and I become forever behind in the plan. Right now the plan is all new, this is my chance to get an A+ for following the plan, meaning I hit 95% of all the workouts.

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Marathon training starts tomorrow

Got in 8 miles this morning, and my pace dipped under 12:00/mi for the first time since this spring. The 8 mile run two days ago made an impact,  I felt stronger. Heart rate was about 130 until the last two miles when it went above 140 or 145. This morning I got up and not sure what to do, so I just looked ahead to what Sunday looks like in the first week of the plan, which says easy 5-8 miles. That sounded good to me, so I went with it.

The training plan starts tomorrow. It looks like 4 days easy between 5-8 miles, one long run of 12 miles with some strides at the end, and a workout, tempo run going 4 x 5 minutes, for a total of 38-48 miles. I bought the Higher Running “Ultimate Running Course” so I will try to incorporate all of that as I go. Best luck to me! I’m hoping to avoid the dreaded “I started a plan then missed two weeks and now it’s pointless because I can’t keep up.”

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Found some interesting data on the Coros app, which had a major overhaul recently in their metrics.

The main update since last time: I took and passed the big test that I had been studying for, the FSOT, so I can focus a bit (a lot) more on running. Which is good because my training plan starts on Monday, in two days!

Looking back I feel like my tracking peaked with the 10K I did in 52 minutes. I think that was a self-contained cycle that culminated in a big effort and which was followed by a month of rest, all of which happened unwittingly but that through circumstance and some subconscious need for rest has led me back to the beginning of this new cycle rested, starting from a point of greater fitness than when I started the last cycle.

So the new plan starts Monday. I looked at both the BQ plan and the regular plan from Higher Running, and the regular one seemed too easy. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hang on and complete the BQ plan but the first few weeks don’t seem too crazy. I did five miles a day the past week to get going again and that was 35 miles without taking too much of a toll. I did 8 this morning and also felt like I could do somewhere between 5-8 each day and not be totally drained so that I can’t complete the next workout. The first week seems mostly to be 5-7 per day which sounds doable.

Excited to get going again. I’ve learned a lot and am mostly eager to implement things. Half of the weight I lost came back while I was at the beach but I’m focused on carb heavy quality eating that Matt Fitzgerald wrote about in his book and the weight should come off from the training volume.

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This screen from my Coros watch app sums it up pretty well!

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Back on the Wagon

I’ve been reading Matt Fitzgerald’s THE NEW RULES OF MARATHON AND HALF-MARATHON NUTRITION. I’ve not been running. The main thing right now has been preparing for the FSOT, foreign service officer test, which is a little less than 3 weeks away. My free time has been reading 50 pages each day of the book US FOREIGN RELATIONS SINCE 1865, which has been fun.

Anyway--Ramadan I didn’t run much, then the month since then it’s been all about marching band. I told myself, it’s OK I haven’t been running: my marathon plan starts a month from now, June 18th, so I’m trying to do an hour a day so that I have a base when the marathon plan starts. 

So I have run maybe once a week the past 3 or 4 weeks. But now things are much more open and I can fit in the hour run per day and still get my 50 pages of studying.

We were marching at a JROTC change of command and I was reading the Matt Fitzgerald: “Holy crap, I said, this book says I need to eat 2x more carbs!” My friend Anderson said “Sounds like you just got permission to eat double the couscous.” The book says 5g of carbs per kg of body weight for someone that runs an hour a day, which means for me : 86 x 5 : 430 g of carbs per day. I wrote Anderson later after I got home and had spent the day eating plain brown rice and pasta. “This is not so easy as it sounds!” And he wrote back saying, “got to have foccacia on deck at all times”. Having 3/4 cup of steel cut oats ready in the morning with fruit means I have 100 g of carbs for the first meal, which makes the idea less daunting the rest of the day.

I have felt exactly what Fitzgerald says, which is that having enough carbs in your diet will make you feel less lethargic throughout the week but also much more energized and springy during the runs. And I have felt that! It feels like I can run in a dynamic way and my legs can take it without feeling like each step is a struggle. It’s amazing. Before I didn’t necessarily feel unenergetic, but he said in the book that people will report a lack of carbs doesn’t affect them... but when put to the test they run quicker and with less perceived exertion despite their feeling ‘the same.’ That has borne out for me. Now I see I’ve been shorting myself and running slower because I insisted on some many runs ‘fasting’ or depeleted from fasting. Not again! The whole thing about fat adaption in the book is that, yes it’s good, but it’s a secondary concern. First things are still first, and that means having your glycogen topped up (it’s like a guitar player neglecting scales and only focusing on obscure advanced techniques--they’re not going as fast as they could because they’re not putting first things first ).

Anyway, I’m back on the band wagon and feeling good. Also eating so many clean starchy carbs--instead of simple sugars-- has been good because my weight hasn’t gone up the past week I’ve been doing it. All the whole grains are crowding out the bad stuff, so my weight should easily go down.

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8 miles today, first 8 mile day in a long time. I felt like I needed to cross that hour threshold and get used to regularly doing 90 minute runs again.Slowed down a lot near the end. Anyway, got it done. Weather cooperates, sunny but not hot.

What’s interesting is that last week I did 10k on the treadmill in 53 minutes! I started staying “let’s see if we can hang on for 5k”, and that became “how about an even thirty minutes”, and then that became “let’s see how close to 40 minutes I get when I cross 5 miles” (42.5 minutes or so). Then I said “hell, I’m close enough to 10k, let’s keep going!” And I did. And my heart rate stayed 168-177, which I thought was awesome.

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Third day in a row and got my 5 miles again. Mina came and ran with me, and she’s motivated now to run with me during my lunch breaks. If I can run 90 minutes most mornings and do an occasional lunch run with her, then I will be getting close to my goal of 60+ miles per week.

Before Ramadan the most I did was 50 miles per week, usually doing 7.5 miles per day. I think I’ll aim this week to get in that same general ballpark but by doing shorter runs more often, ease into it a bit.

My first 5 mile /1 hour run, I was just happy to be running again. On my 2nd, I felt surprisingly sore, to the point I needed to foam roll just to be able to sleep. Then third one today everything felt better. Feeling motivated.

Even though there were a couple of days splurging my weight in the scale today said the same, and I am back on the intermittent fasting style of Ramadan, just with water and my morning coffee added back in. Now when I do my 12” pace and my heart rate is in the 120s and 130s, which is incredible to me. I’m halfway to my goal of losing 50 pounds, or going from 205 to 155. I do feel some or my endurance is gone though because my form starts to fall apart. Doing weights will help me maintain form late in the race when I am fatigued, so today when I go in to work I’ll do my second day of weekly weights. This time I’ll add in some banded glute bridges and the hip thrust, which I read about here:

The Band is starting to get into change of command season, which means nearly always PT on your own, so that means I can focus on building the strength and huge aerobic base now that so that mid June I can hit the marathon plan and be very ready to follow all the workouts and instructions.

Speaking of running and Ramadan, the lady who won the London Marathon had an incredible day even though she didn’t do any long runs prior due to fasting for it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/23/sports/sifan-hassan-london-marathon.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Mind blowing—you kind of surprise yourself by unexpectedly moving up to the front and then sprinting away to claim victory—but then again she is the world record holder for the mile!

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I remember one of the interviews from Ali on the Run where the guest talked about “realizing their running was worth it, too, doing the extra bits that the pros would do,” and that when she gave herself that extra attention to detail she jumped to a whole ‘nother level. Specifically she talked about taking fifteen minutes every single day to foam roll. So that’s what I will do too.

Looking online I found these two videos, one explanatory and the other a follow-along video. In the same vein, I also started taking powdered beet in capsules (for the nitric oxide benefit, which allows you to push harder at the same heart rate level), and eating tart cherries (for less lactic acid build up). Before the NYC 100 miler I took those and they helped a lot, but I suddenly became intolerant of beets and threw it up each time I had it…so last night I took the first beet capsule and *hoped*I wouldn’t have any problems. Happily it was fine, but I think maybe the effect is not as strong if it’s hours after the run instead of before. I will investigate!

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A couple of days ago I put into practice the advice from the NN Running Team, doing exercises. I did barbell squats and kettlebell swings. I also got my balance boards out and started reviewing RUNNING REWIRED.

Then later in the week I led PT and we did a Bodweogjy Warrior stretching video and a HIIT one. But it wasn’t until today that I did my first longer run over an hour in a couple weeks. 5.0 mi in 61 minutes. First run since Ramadan ended (two days ago, except for the mile warmup yesterday). First longerish slower run since I lost 23 pounds (my other runs were hard one and two mile efforts). And what’s crazy is I ran faster but my heart rate was 10-15 beats per minute slower. I used to never get under 140 and now I never got above 140, which is really good since my MAF heart rate is 142. Now I can say my easy running is really easy enough, at least by the numbers. Before I’d go 145-148 and just say “well I’m close enough.” So we’ll see if that makes any difference.

While running I thought to run in the more exaggerated, higher knees, oval motion with the feet travelling forward parallel over the ground. And it didn’t make much difference, though I felt my legs get weaker from not being used to that. So it underlined for me the importance of weights and plyometrics in order to have stronger legs to keep my form from going bad as fatigue sets in.

The next two months is all about strengthening in those ways. And more Tom Merrick mobility videos.

I also want to get a routine where I can do leg weights, core and back, cycling cross training, and a threshold run, have all if this I’m a way that makes sense where I show up to each rested and prepared. I think part of that is just getting used to it, ie not that “I just started weights and am sore a week after everytime” feeling. Later that will be mostly bodyweight and skills activities so I can be rested, but now I can go heavier, at least that’s what I got from the NN Team video.

The fact that I made a big dent in a major goal—losing twenty-three pounds, makes all this very very exciting!

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Did the Parents Mile in 06:32!

The gun went off, there were only a few serious-er runners up at the front. The man who won I didn’t see more than a few seconds. My watch said “615 pace” which I thought was much faster than I wanted, but not enough to slow me down. Then the watch updated more to the real pace, 5:15. And then I definitely slowed it down, trying to get just a little bit under 7:00. By this point I stopped paying attention and just went by feel, a pace I felt I could keep up the rest of the time.

At the halfway mark my split said “3:12”, or 6:24/pace. So I had slowed down but not that much. I tried to maintain the same pace and for 3:20 for the second half. Quite a good day! Almost a minute faster than last week, bur during the ACFT by the time I ran I had already sprinted and done plank and push-up and running 2 miles instead of one. So maybe I should have known I could do better than “around 7:00”. Interestingly I found Matt Fitzgerald’s book “On Pacing” on Amazon and might try to read that next!