Trying to get back in the saddle

I am trying to make the best of my vacation time, and summer, by getting back into a good routine.

Today, I got out about an hour later than I'd hoped for, just before 7, but it was still fairly cool. I'd hoped to sort of combine the two speedwork workouts I missed last week: 2X 15min tempo and 100M repeats, and since it was only about 13C, my dog might have been game. Unfortunately, he'd had an allergic reaction at the lake yesterday. His muzzle had swelled dramatically. We're not sure what he'd gotten into, or what had bit him, but he was out of sorts until the swelling went down. He looks back to normal today but he was dragging even on the short walk out, and we ran about 200M before I decided to call it a day. He picked up speed dramatically on the way back and returned to bed. Poor guy. He'll get a walk later with the other dog.

Anyway, I headed back out and after a warm up jog, I hit the Canal and did the tempo stuff with about 5 min recovery in between (a bit long, but I wanted to hit a not-quite nearby fountain for water). The first segment was 1.92 miles, the 2nd 1.98 miles, according to Garmin (which sometimes falls a touch short, but we won't think about that). A bit slow, but ok. Then I jogged a bit and did 8X approx 100M in a park on dirt. It was flat but a bit chewed up, but that's ok. I would have done 2 more repeats but the park is an unofficial dog park and more and more dogs were off leash. That's ok, I was expecting that, and having a dirt strip in shade was a good trade off. This workout, which was supposed to be on a separate day, was 2X 10 X 100M with 30 seconds rest, but at a slower pace. I've done this sort of workout before and it really doesn't seem to do anything for me. I feel like a bit of a prig for thinking that; certainly if all I was doing was the 100M repeats today, I would have done 20 of them, but a bit faster with much more recovery in between. I usually stroll back and take about 1:30 doing so. LOL That's what I'm more suited for. It's much much much more fun to push more and feel the burn and then get more of a break. When it comes to 400Ms, yeah, I'll do them slower with shorter recoveries, but 100Ms seem to be mainly anaerobic anyway so might as well work that more fully.

I also did a very modest set of plyometrics: 2X 50M skipping. I hope to bump these up gradually and get into the jumps/hops soon. I was doing this in the States regularly, but it's not something my run club does, except in a lighter/easier form as a warm up, and I miss it.

After that, I jogged/walked home and did resistance exercises and ate breakfast. Is there another good source of potassium besides bananas? I despise bananas. Other than that, it was a great fun hard workout day.

I see that next week's tempo segments are 20 min long, and then we get into longer continuous tempo runs...I think, since I'm going to be away from run club for about a month, and apart from June we don't do tempo runs together anyway, I'd rather gradually bump up my 2 segments to 20 min, and whittle down the break in between, than do a longer tempo run. In june, we did 30-35-40 min over a few weeks, and I found that it was hard to concentrate and push for the entire thing...the first half was soft and I kept catching myself coasting, so it ended up being the fast end of easy on the way out and then 15-20 min of what I'd call true tempo going back. And without the run club companions, I probably wouldn't have done the workouts at all, judging by past months. With 15 min segments, however, it's much more interesting and honest and I can get into a better rhythm and go faster. Ultimately, the best thing might be to keep the 15 min segments, maybe morph slowly into 20 min, and lengthen the jogging portion afterwards, and gradually add a 2nd batch of tempo segments after the jogging portion. This was like the DAniels workouts I used to do--they were hard but seemed very beneficial.

I think I'm going off the rails partly because I don't really have plans or goal races this fall: the pressure's off, no long-long runs, no marathon training, so it's a good time to experiment with workouts. I would like to do the Winterman again next Feb, but that's a ways away.

At any rate, I'm really happy with what I did today!

Tomorrow, we're flying down to Florida. It will be hot and humid but there's a gym; if I make it early, it won't be too bad to do speedwork and resistance exercises. And on easy days, it will be fine jogging outside. After a week and a half, we'll go up to NY for almost a week, and since that's in the 'mountains', it's not really the best thing running-wise (it's not much fun), so maybe I'll do my tempo segments jogging up those long, long hills. LOL. Then it'll be almost a week in PA and NJ, which is prime running--there's a great 2.5 dirt loop where we'll be in PA and tracks, and a fair load of fast local runners, so it's very inspiring to run there. And NJ is flat and beach, so no shoes on easy days, and maybe not even on speedwork days if I feel up to it.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention the new shoes--I got two pairs of Nike Track Star shoes for $40 apiece in Texas. Discount at the PX, oh, yeah. I was impressed because usually the PX has a crappy selection of women's running shoes, but this one actually had at least a couple different models of racing flats, plus Nike Frees. They didn't have my size but they had two pairs a 1/2 size larger and that seemed fine. They're really light and flexible--I think I like them even better than my Saucony shoes. So it looks like I'm back to wearing Nike. For the time being. lol

Internet access will be spotty while I'm gone, so maybe I'll have the mother of all updates in Aug.