Sunday, September 01, 2013

Progress

I admit I was starting to lose patience, but things are definitely improving already, still only one week into training. While I should not get carried away just yet, it's nice to see a 7 for the pace rather than an 8.

My main source of troubles is that damn Garmin at the moment. I does work fine when on my wrist but utterly refuses to upload the data into the computer, which can be rather frustrating as I do hope to get some pointers regarding training from analysing the run. I've tried a few things and will see if it starts behaving again tomorrow.

I have often used Friday as a faster day in base training, though at a restrained effort. I was not entirely sure if running faster only one week into training was such a good idea, but frankly I wanted to move faster for a change and was very much looking forward to it. The run itself was rather frustrating, though. I could of course claim that I held back because after all I was only at the start of training, but in reality I ran pretty much as fast as I could, it just happened to be rather slowly. It's rather telling that the average HR was rather low at 156; the body (or maybe it was the brain) just refused to give any more.

However, I did notice the very next morning that the legs seemed ready to move again and I just felt a bit bouncier than before. Most of the run was just another 8 miler bit I did add a few strides towards the end. Now if only I remembered to do that more often ...

12 miles on Sunday doesn't really qualify for a long run, but it just did not look like a great idea to run longer. I managed to move at a decent clip at a reasonable heart rate (for that stage of training that is, obviously) but my legs felt rather tired and sore afterwards, much more so than I thought they would; doing gardening work might have contributed as well, though.

All in all I'm happy enough. This is early days, very very early in fact and things will improve a lot over teh next few weeks and months.

30 Aug
10 miles, 1:14:16, 7:25 pace, HR 156
   incl. 8 miles @ 7:13 pace (HR 160)
31 Aug
8 miles, 1:02:10, 7:46 pace, HR 146
1 Sep
12 miles, 1:30:53, 7:34 pace, HR 147
Weekly Mileage: 62

2 comments:

  1. Not sure what model you have, but my 305 computer uploads were dodgy until I gave watch contacts a light rub with wet/dry paper.

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  2. I took two weeks off after the Devil O' the Highlands race and on my return had really high HR for a given pace and felt stiff after runs, and just didn't feel like I had any omph, I particularly struggled in warmer and humid days. It was really frustrating to lost so much fitness so quickly.

    Last week I was away working in Germany (near Hannover) and got to run most evenings and even though it was warmer my HR was much lower for a given pace, and I made steady progress through the week for HR/pace ratio. By the end of the week I was running smoothly and comfortably with a perfectly acceptable HR.

    It feels like my heat adaptations were lost in my two week lay off and back living in a cooler climate, and suspect my blood volume dropped dramatically with no stimulus to maintain it. My muscles also felt lazy, stiff and lacking in any bounce, I'm guess partly due to newly healed fibres have bits of scare tissue and also perhaps my neuromuscular connections/conditioning just not being tuned for my new post race configuration.

    Two weeks back in training and it feels like my blood volume and heat adaptations are returning in modest form, and my muscles are all tuning in once more - feel much more like a runner than a couch potato.

    I guess you are on a similar curve. It does make me wonder about the value of a complete layoff, perhaps cross training such as walking, swimming and cycling might make sense to keep the body moving during recovery.

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