Random Banter

 I didn't expect to race again this year but there was a race that came up for early November so I went for it.  In all honestly I needed this.  It's a very long stretch from late August until sometime in the next year to not have something specific to train for. So this race was put on the schedule.  It's just a 5K race but it's reinvigorated me to get training for something specific.  Here's my plan.  This next week I'm just going to run like I have been running. So that means on Monday it will just be a very short run (25 minutes most likely) on the treadmill. Tuesday will be an outdoor workout of some sort.  I'm not sure what that will be but it will done at lunch time during work...if the weather permits.  I will run either on Wednesday or Thursday just depending on how I feel.  It will be another session like Monday. Friday will be the same.  On Saturday where I usually have a long run I will do a critical power (CP) test to see wh...

If you read my post from last week you know that I was not feeling my best towards the end of the week. That continued at the start of this week and I decided to error on the side of caution and not do any running until Thursday.  So I only ran on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.   Thursday and Friday were very easy running.  Just 25 easy minutes on the treadmill.  I should also mention that I stopped following the training I was following from Stryd.  Being sick and this upcoming weeks possible disruptions I decided it just wasn't the best time to follow it.  I probably won't be following a program until the middle of October.   Saturday's run was a long run of an hour.  I had planned on doing closer to 70 minutes but my brand new treadmill started making a knocking sound when I went above 6 MPH and at a incline of 2.  So I cut it off at an hour and then spent the next hour or so seeing if I could figure out why it was knocking....

 So I only got in 4 runs this week. It should have been 5.  And I started to get down on myself for that.  However I had to keep reminding myself that I am not a professional runner and life gets in the way.  So let me explain.  My wife hadn't been feeling well on Wednesday and on Thursday, after a rough day, she decided to take a COVID test. Well it was positive.  All week long we had been going to bed early but I didn't think a whole lot about it because we had been up earlier than normally (for my wife's work!).  But when she tested positive for COVID things kind of fell into place. Even though Friday was a super easy day (just 20 minutes running with a couple of 10 second speed ups) I decided to call it and not run.  Saturday morning I also ended up calling my long run, and I really wanted to do it.  However by the evening I was feeling a bit better.  So this morning I did get on the new treadmill and have myself an easy 25 minute ru...

 I've done the easy running before and it feels great for a few weeks but then there is no progress!  You have to have some sort of speed in there.  Just running slow and easy does not make you faster no matter what people say.  I do believe that 80%+ of your time/miles should be slow and easy but if you want to get faster, and who doesn't, you need to have that 20% where you are throwing in some extra stuff. So after 2 weeks of easy running, or doing nothing for the first week, I'm going to be starting a program tomorrow to maintain what I have.  I'll run that for about 10 weeks and see where were are at.   This last week was the first time I've ran 5 days in a week.  Everything went fine.  There were a couple of times where I wondered about getting up so early but I did manage to get it done.  My right calf, at times, when I run gives me a bit of issues but I can't put my finger on it. So for now I'm using the massage gun on it and hop...

 I took this week off from doing mostly anything.  I did ride a stationary bike one morning and I did run on Friday morning because I woke up early but otherwise it was nothing.  Today, a week after my race, I did go out and do some easy running.  I suppose you might call it shuffling!  I think for the next 6 weeks or so 90%+ of my running will be easy as I work towards running 5 days a week.  One day I intend on doing some more speed work but since I don't have anything on my schedule I don't need to do anything serious.  If I get to bored I'll add in a second day.  One day will be short harder stuff and the 2nd day will be more tempo type of work. But for now I just want to be consistent with running 5 days a week! I don't know why but running 5 days a week just seems horrible but I also know if I want to run some of my longer races I need to start getting faster and running for longer.  So 5 days a week it is.  But that's it.  I ...