Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Rough Start To Week

Monday:
When the alarm sounded I was trying to convince myself to take a day off running and give myself the 'needed' rest. As you know, this goes against my golden rule number one. Don't make decisions of days off while in bed.
After shuffling down to the basement I knew I could give myself a decent chance and go run a loop that gave me the opportunity to cut short if needed. The pace was slow. I didn't mind that, as the purpose 48 hours post hard race should feel like shit and all I needed to do was flush out the lactate from my aching muscles. Accomplished. I ran my usual loop out to Martin road and home via Vermilion.

Total: 1:00:00 8 miles


Tuesday:
Another sub par morning to start things off but I was out the door and on my way to a questionable run. The main issue this morning was the severity of GERD I was having. I'm not too sure of the source but it may have been a salad dressing I had last night. (the run would stir up the GERD so bad it ruined the first half of my day at work)
Once I hit the thirty minute mark I worked into a series of repeats of one minute. These repeats were on the schedule as "optional" and to survey my legs and do what I thought was beneficial. After a few repeats I was really loosening up and thought I had made it past the 'recovery' period since the 10 miler Saturday. Foolish. Not too fast. By the seventh repeat I was starting to wake up some soreness in my quads that was remaining from the race. That is where I called it a morning and ran some thirty minutes home in recovery mode. A good call on my part. I have been really trying to eat well, and keep in the fluids to allow my muscles to recover and by tomorrow I am thinking things will be much better and allow me to run hard on Thursday's workout. A little extra rest now is better than going into June fatigued.

Total: 1:12:00 10.5 miles
7 X 1 minute at 5min/mile


3 comments:

Julie said...

Hi Gregg,
At least you know yourself well enough when you know it is time to call it a run. What training plan are you using right now? I am hoping to start my marathon training next week but honestly I am not sure what plan to use. Suggestions?

Gregg said...

Julie-
It has taken some years of 'growing up' and having some major crash and burns before learning to listen to my own body. It doesn't come right away.

I have a marathon plan that a coach by the name of Greg McMillan writes for me. It is pay service over the internet. There are several different 'plans' one could purchase. For your first marathon there are TONs of marathon plans out there. I think it is important to figure out what will work for you. It looks to me like you can run LONG really easy by the number of half marathons you have run this spring. All you have to do is build on that training and SLOWLY get your weekend long run up in time and then mileage.
Go to Barnes or Boarders and find a couple of intro marathon books and read them to see what the difference is. It is really easy to get way too technical but most plans boil down to this.
Run at least 5-6 days a week. Slowly add time then mileage to your weekly long run. Add a day or two of "uptempo" style running once a week. That sounds very simplified but really that is what will get you to the finish line.
I'm sure we will talk more in the future but get going, stay healthy, and run, run, run.

Julie said...

Thanks coach! I will see what I can up with:) You make it sound so easy!