This Week in Running (February 5th to 11th)

This was a great week for me to get back on track on my running goals as I prepare for the marathon at the end of April. Considering that I have not been as consistent with my posting, it may be hard to tell that I have a marathon coming up.

January was not the training month that I wanted to have, but, who really wants to spend half of a month sick. I got hit with the flu that has been impacting a lot of people all over the country. Considering how many people have ended up in the hospital, or worse, I think I got off easy. This is especially important since everyone else in my family have a higher chance of getting sick than I do and none of them caught it. Something to be said for hand sanitizer and using a Neti pot to making this go away. I did have to take a trip to urgent care to get a high powered cough suppressant, so that I could sleep with out waking myself, or my wife up. Now, I am on to February and feeling up to getting back on track. For the sake of brevity, I have been training for the Marathon using the Nike Running Club app with a marathon training program built in. I tell it when my race is and it sets a plan for it. The plan is adjusted based on how well I run over the course of the week as well as how I do on benchmark drills that are spaced out over the weeks.

Screen shot from my phone. This is how many
shows I had to listen to as of Jan. 29th.

Monday, February 5th. I ran 5.75 miles this morning with a time of 57:49. That puts my pace at about 10’03”. Not too bad for recovering from rebelling lungs. It was nice to run in my usual places and see how things have changed. In particular, there is a part of my route where there is some new houses being built and that have gone up so fast since I have been down. It will be nice when the street lights in that area are up and working, so I don’t have such a dark spot in my route. Typically, I run while listening to podcasts. Considering how many podcasts I have in my queue, you would think that I don’t listen as often as I do. Thing is that I am working through a backlog of shows going back to 2016. I have gone through and purge out the shows that have lost my interest, or episodes that are very event focused. So, what is left is still subjects that I want to hear more about. On this run, I listened to the most recent episodes of MacStories and Twenty Thousand Hertz. It made the time pass quickly. It was good to get my feet moving again too.

Tuesday, February 6th. This day had one of my most challenging drills to date. The schedule called for a 6 X 1000 meter speed drill. B as I call, I had to run 1000 meters as fast as I could, pause for about 90 seconds, than do it over again until I ran it 6 times. So, I ran full our for 6 kilometers (3.72 miles) over a time of 33:35. That is an average pace of 8’54”. My time on my fastest kilometer was my second interval, with a time of 8’06”. On this morning, I had Cortex playing during the run. I listened to a pretty good piece of the episode by the time I finished the drill. I was completely worn out.

Wednesday, February 7th. This was an indoor training day. I have been using the Nike Training Club app for my Cross Training work. The routine for this session is called Back It Down. I have been running consistently for about 3 years, but, I have basically ignored my core and upper body strength and I can really feel it whenever I do one of these workouts. It only took a little over 24 minutes to make me sweat like it is summer time. All of it was focused on upper body and core strength as well as balance. I listened to music on my iPhone during this since there is a lot of talking during each part of the workout.

Thursday, February 8th. This was a benchmark day. About every couple of weeks or so, the Nike Running Club app has me run a 7 minute warm up, followed by an all out sprint for 3 minutes and a 5 minute cool down. I have done a few of these before, but, this was the first one I have done in a while where I wasn’t sick or it wasn’t freezing outside. I also run these with music on since this is a guided drill with a lot of talking. I covered a total distance of 1.63 miles with a 9’18” average pace.

Friday, February 9th. This was a big day. A problem I have had with my training, even before I got sick was I had a tendency to skip my long runs on the weekends. Between being tired from the long week as well as getting up with my youngest to that my wife can catch up on her sleep, it was my training that suffered. I decided to let the schedule decide when my long runs would happen instead of moving it to the weekend and letting it not happen. Friday was the day for the long run, so I let it be. I got up at 3 am instead of my usual 4 and got out there. I ran 12.5 miles in a time of 2:09:08. That is an average pace of 10’20”. It was great get that short term goal done. During this run, I listened to the Accidental Tech Podcast and Do By Friday. Two very different shows, but they both kept my spirits up as I covered the distance. 

Art from the Nike Running Club app recording my run
on Friday. I felt rabbit fast that day.

I felt really good getting those accomplishments done for the week and I feel like this marathon coming up is not impossible. I even hope to improve on my time from last year.