Block 2, Week 1 - Complete!

 I'm going to try and find some way to make this more interesting but for now you are just going to get a recap of my week in workouts/running!

 

Monday - This is a weight lifting day.  I don't enjoy weight lifting as much as I used to (I used to power lift back in the day) but I know it's important for my thyroid condition so I do it.  Possibly dropping one day for running more in the summer but we shall see.  But this was a new routine and it left me a bit sore but nothing to bad. 

Tuesday - First run outside! It was dark and cold and a little bit windy. But I got it in.  I'm still basing my runs, for better or worse, off of heart rate.  This one was an easy run and the heart rate was a bit higher than on the treadmill but not by the much. Which was surprising.  I think the colder weather might have had something to do with that. We'll see how this weeks outdoor run goes.  It was a whopping 2.4 miles outside!

Thursday - Run workout day!  Love these days! This was done on the treadmill indoors so I could pace it a bit more precisely.  The workout was 10 minutes warmup followed by 20 minutes of threshold.  For me on the treadmill this was discussed (Claude AI) as between 4.6 MPH and 4.8 MPH.  My head rate was lower than what it should have been, a good thing, on this threshold so perhaps more of a gray zone run than a threshold run.  I'm happy with it and it is one of the ways I'm seeing that I am adapting to this training.  I'll do a similar run this next week but it will be more like 5 minutes at 4.6, 15-18 minutes at 4.7 to 4.8 and then perhaps a little bit of 4.9 at the end.  I'm looking to get my heart rate up to 148-154.  I'll be curious if my heart rate is more in the zone need/prescribed but I do enjoy these longer type of workouts.  Not killing myself with sprints and a fair amount of faster running.  Supposedly this will help close the aerobic deficiency that I have.  There is a technical explanation, and I'll probably get it wrong, but it's basically closing the gap between LT1 (aerobic) and LT2 (where you start to go more lactic). Right now I have a huge gap in that area so if I can get my LT1 down closer to LT2 it will be a good thing!

Friday - Another weight session.  Again a new bunch of exercises.  And I am still sore!  It wasn't a hindrance on the long run on Saturday but it hit some areas that probably need some work!

Saturday - Long run. Just 65 minutes for me.  I'm going to work up to 75 minutes over the next couple of weeks and perhaps top out at 90 minutes this summer.   My easy pace on the treadmill is about 4.1 MPH, up from 4.0 at the start (it doesn't sound like much but it is in my mind!).  I did 10 minutes at 4, and then went 30 at 4.1, a 2 minute recovery, and then did a 10 minute uphill walk to keep the heart rate in the 130's area.  Overall a good workout (hit 4 miles...think this was the first time I've hit 4 miles on a workout of any time this year!).  

Next week will be much of the same other than the workout so I'll try to not bore you with to many details now that you know the format of what I'm doing.  At week 8 of this block I'll do another 5K test (perhaps an outdoor race!) and at week 4 I'll back off a little bit. This was a recommendation of the AI that's helping me but this is also something I've observed over time as well.  

Hope everyone's running is going well!

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