Random Banter

 It's been awhile but I wanted to get this out more for myself than anything.  This Sunday the 24th is my half marathon.  Starting off the year with this race.  I'm not considering it an A race by any stretch of the imagination.  It was more of a race that I was using to keep active through the winter.   On reflection I'm not sure it was the best idea.  My time might have been better spent doing some training and maybe pushing things a little more.  However I did run the longest I've run in a couple of years which I think is needed.  Having said that I didn't do anything that got me close to a half marathon distance. So Sunday will be interesting to see how it goes.   My goal is to try and run somewhere around 12:30 to 12 minute miles.  The one thing I have going for me is that this race is at a slightly lower elevation but not much. I'm fairly confident in this because on my last long run outside I was just just running f...

Today was the day I had been thinking about for the past 5 weeks or so.  It was race day! My last race, to recap, was the trail race at the end of August.  It went well but I came out of that race kind of down due to expectations being set to high and it messed with my head a bit.  I did get over and it's helped me reframe how I think about racing. Racing shouldn't be worrying about what place you will get or even what time you should get (mainly for trails I've discovered) but should be about you versus the course. So that's how I went into this race.   As I mentioned in my post last week my critical power did go down but I thought that was a mistake.  However I thought about it all week and thought maybe it was correct.  On Monday I did a work out of 6 times 2 minutes with 1 minute recovery which was about half of what I had done the previous Monday and I have to say it felt relatively easy.  So heading into the race I told myself that I was goi...

 I logged into the Stryd Powercenter yesterday after my long run to update my run with my thoughts and I noticed that my critical power, CP, had dropped.  It went from 322 to 312 (Stryd has a few bugs in their little graphs...they say it went from 325 to 312 but it was really 322!).  Which caused me to pause for a minute.  I should have known with running more on the treadmill and not doing any long hard runs that it would drop.  But after pausing for a moment I got it back together and told myself that I'd run what I had planned on running this next Saturday.   The race plan.  The Stryd race calculator says that I should race a 5K at about 319 watts and that will put me somewhere in at 27:37 which will not be lower than my summer 5K.  This might be subject to change but I think what I'll do it set my watch to run between 320 and 340 (Coros watches only do 10 watt increments).  My runs in the 330 area have felt really good.  I don't...

 Maybe at some point someone will read this but in the mean time this is here for me to come back to.  Yesterday I did my A goal race.  It was a new personal best on that course which I'm so thankful for.  But I have a few things to say that I'll hopefully remember the next time that I run this course! What I'm going to say here is going to come across as negative, I believe, but I mean it more as a way to learn and move forward.   Going into the race I wasn't sure if I had trained enough.  I had been training but for some reason it just didn't feel like enough. Despite this feeling we still bettered our personal best by a couple of minutes.  And that's what we need to focus on.  Not the other metrics that told us we would have a better time. Better to think of, on trail races, that it's a time trail against the clock and not where you are going to place among other people. That's probably my best take away.  The 10 days leading into thi...

 After last weeks 5K race we went on a little vacation for the 4th of July weekend.  I decided that I was not going to bring any running stuff and just enjoy the down time. After all I'm not a professional athlete! As it turns out I could have brought my running stuff and been just fine but I think the time off was worth it for me.  When we got back into town on Tuesday, the 4th, I went out for a run and did some strides.  And my legs felt like bricks.  I think it was a whole combination of things.  Not having run since the race on Saturday, eat WAY to much food on the vacation and doing this right after a 2 hour trip Thursday when I went back out running, in the morning, my legs felt fine.  It was just an easy run for 33 minutes or so.   Saturday my legs felt heavy once again.  I'm not sure why.  It may have been because of the humidity or running at a higher power.  I did 2 x 5 minutes at threshold or high zone 2 for me with ...

 The day had arrived.  All week I had been thinking about this and getting nervous.  I don't know why but I was.  My thought going into it was this is going to hurt and be painful.  And I had resolved myself to that. However when the race was done...it wasn't painful and it didn't hurt.  It felt good and it made me want to run more which is quite the accomplishment.  Most races at the end I feel like shit and don't want to run anymore but since the race I've been thinking about all the running I want to do! But let me tell you about the race! I arrived at the race about 30 minutes early and found my friend who was doing the race with me.  Going into the race it seemed like we would be evenly matched and would be able to run together so that was good.  I asked if he wanted to go and do a warm up run.  He didn't but I went ahead and did a 6-7 minute warm up. The first half of it was just jogging easily.  The second half I threw in som...

 As I right this I'm feeling a bit burnt out and I need a couple of day break that I'm going to get.  I'll take Monday off from running and possibly go running on Tuesday but we will see.  But lets recap last week! On Monday of last week it was the hardest workout we've had so far.  It was 10x2 minutes with a 1 minute break in between.  This was supposed to be 400 meter repeats but since I don't have access to a track I did the 2 minutes (which is close to what I think my 400 meter time would be...it's a bit more 2:20 I think).  We did these in the 305 to 320 watt range (CP is 306).  It's been a few days so it doesn't seem as bad now but at the time I think I was starting to feel some pukiness coming on. Thankfully I didn't.   Wednesday was supposed to be a tempo run but because I was still feeling it (tired) from Monday's workout I just did an easy run.  Also this was my first run with my new Topo Cyclone 2 shoes (may do a review on the...

 This was the first week where we put in some specific 5K training.  I feel kind of foolish even saying this or even writing about it.  But I'm going to!   As I posted previously, my CP went up to 306, so my Stryd Race Predicted time has me racing at 312 (at the time) and I had 4 minutes at 5K pace with 3 minutes recover on Wednesday.  So that's what I did.  It was a lot of work but I'm hoping that as I get close to the race it will pay off.  This coming week I don't have any specific race pace stuff but I do have 12 strides (30 seconds with 1 minute rest).  On Monday we have "tempo" which is our half marathon pace...LOL!  But I really feel like running at something faster than what we have in the past ran at is helping us.  My pacing, so far, has been faster than it has been in the past and I'm kind of excited about that.  Now I'm not going to set a new 5K PR...I believe but I think my trail race in late August has a chance of...

 Another critical power test is in the books!   Week 12, or every 4 weeks, is only 3 days of running vs the normal 4 that I run (or attempt to run!).  I think it's important to take a step back.  However at the end of these 4th weeks I do a critical power test.  The previous 2 CP tests that I've done I haven't been very nervous about but this one, for some reason, I was pretty nervous about.  I decided to do a 3 minutes - 12 minute CP test.  I had never done one of these before and maybe that's why my nerves were a bit high.   Yesterday (Saturday) I set out on my CP test.  It was earlier than I normally run on Saturday but I had other stuff that I needed to get done so I was up early and had fueled like I have been doing.  After 10 minutes of warming up I went into my 3 minute test.  My goal for each test, based on some reason, is to keep the first 75% of it at the modeled ability on Stryd and then after that I push...or a...

 Last week was my race...my "A" race if you will.  It was a 4.8 mile trail race that I'd been training all year for...well for as long as I've been running this year!! In my previous post I had talked about some times I was seeing with the Stryd calculator.  I felt they were a bit off but if those had come true I would have been over the world to have one of them.  However a day or two before I was to run my race I was able to download a copy of the race course and input it into Stryd which gave me a more accurate time.  I believe the projected time, if I ran at that power (280 watts), would have been 51:45 or something along those lines.   Saturday morning I was feeling good.  I had a bit of toast with peanut butter and some coffee at the house and then we drove to the course which was about 30 minutes away from town.  I did a little over a half mile of warm up and then waited for the first race, an 8 miler, to go off and then we lined up an...

I'm one week out from my trail race that I've spent the bulk of the summer training for.  To say I'm stoked is an understatement.  I'm in the cut back phase of the program I'm following and I'm feeling pretty good.   The Stryd application that I've been using for my training is telling me that there is a possibility I could run this in about 48:30.  The last time I ran this course it was 59:12 I believe. So as much as I want to believe that 48:30 time I have my doubts.  I'm the fittest I've been for running.  However I've been training on roads and not trails so I suspect that takes some time into account.  Additionally there is some climbing on it but not a ton.  This time is based on if I can keep my power at 280 watts which is 97% of my critical power (288).  Part of me wants to believe that I can do it but there's also a large part that says I'd better make some adjustments to not go up in flames.  So here's my 3 goals (A,B,C) a...