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Week 82
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Greetings, my fellow sojourners in this running life. We had a wonderful trip up to Wisconsin, and somehow managed to miss the bad weather both coming and going. It’s always a blessing to be able to visit with friends and relatives and catch up on each others lives. The internet is great for basic communication, but only person-to-person can we really get a sense for how we all are doing.
The trip wasn’t so great for my running, however. I only managed to get out for some short runs in Wisconsin. Furthermore, the shoveling I did last Saturday wasn’t helpful, as I’m not an ambidextrous shoveler. I ended up putting a lot of stress on the right side of my body, which has affected me all week with lower back tightness…I’m sure it’ll pass soon enough. My sub-par 34.5 mile week looks as such:
Sun: 4.4 very easy
Mon: 4.4 moderate-to-hard short tempo (same course as Sun, but about 6 min faster)
Tue: 0 (traveled all day)
Wed: 4 w/ 2 in 12:03 (snagged a few miles in between storms)
Thur: 6.2 easy-to-moderate acceleration run
Fri: 8 moderate-to-somewhat hard acceleration run w/ last two easy (avg: 7:16 pace, 152 bpm)
Sat: 7.5 easy (avg: 7:59 pace, 143 bpm)
During the course of the week: roughly 5 miles were at about 6 minute pace or under, 9 or so (Mon, Thur, and Fri) were in the high 6 to low 7 range, and the rest was at an easy 7:40 and above pace. I finally started experimenting with the Heart Rate Monitor associated with the Garmin 405cx. Still know little of what I need to know about me and it; I’ve never run with one before. What I do know is that my resting pulse rate is 46-47bpm. My max pulse rate is somewhere in the low 180’s…I haven’t done a proper stress test yet. During Friday’s acceleration run, I reached 179 on a longish uphill stretch that I intentionally ran hard for that purpose, but it ended too soon to max out the HR. Saturday, I just tried to run easy and steady to get a baseline. I noticed that my HR went up about 10-12 bpm for the same pace from the second mile to the last. Not sure if that’s normal. At any rate, it’ll be another tool, but I’m not really sure how I’ll use it. Makes me all the more impressed with what Alf T. has been doing, though.
As we finish up the old year, it’s a good time to for reflection and self-assessment. Then we can start thinking about plans for the New Year. If I were to characterize my year, I would say it was no gains and no losses. I started out the year with a 18:0x 5k, and that is also what I ended the year with. The knee that had caused me such grief summer of ’11 is mostly healed, but I did reaggravate it in June due to inattention. My lingering hip issue has been up and down---some progress was made with new exercises, but I still have issues getting over 6 miles without it tightening up. If I were to criticize myself for one thing, it would be lack of consistency with ancillary activity—drills, core, strength. I think that starting in next week’s blog entry, I’ll start reporting ancillary work more along the lines that Ken is doing. Hopefully, that will get me to be more consistent by being more accountable. Next week I’ll list some goals for the coming year.
Hope you all are having a nice Holiday and may you receive good tidings for the New Year. All the best!