Last Week’s Posts

Addition vs. Integration

Twin Falls and Mount Washington (Trail report)

Last Week’s Workouts

Melissa

For my weekday workout schedule, I’m basically following the 50K plan in Krissy Moehl’s Running Your First Ultra.

Monday: 1 hour yoga

We had an intense hike the day before. Plus my left hamstring and calf had been pretty tight, and yoga has been helping release the tension.

Tuesday: “Steady” run, 5.7 mi, 709 ft gain; 35 min strength training

The plan called for 5-6 miles steady, but I was wanting some hills. I decided to go up Queen Anne Hill a couple of times, on a hot-for-Seattle day. Parts of the hill are 15+% grade, so I focused on staying in a heart rate range instead of pace as the “steady” part.

I ended my run at the gym and got a mix of upper body, lower body, and core in. I would have preferred a little longer, but I was tired and starving. So I probably should pick up a few more calories for days like this.

Wednesday: Easy run, 4.5 mi, 125 ft gain

I took the outer (gravel) loop of Green Lake. Threw in 4 x 30 s “surges” in the last half to loosen up a bit.

Thursday: Morning 30 min yoga (by myself at home); evening pyramid hill run, 6.1 mi, 663 ft elevation gain

I took the bus instead of bike commuting so I’d have fresher legs for the workout. The hill run was a series a time intervals, equal up and down—2, 4, 2, 4, 2 min. The hill was about a 5% grade on average. Intervals got me about 440 ft of the gain. The rest came from the cool down run home.

This is the one of just a few times of late (and in years) that I’ve run 3 consecutive days. My legs felt surprisingly good, like I hadn’t even run on Wednesday!

Friday: Early morning 1 hour yoga

I’m not a morning workout person, despite being an early riser. I tried it this week but not sure this will be a regular thing.

Saturday: Long run (road), 10 mi, 164 ft gain

Nuff said.

Sunday: Easy bike, 30.8 mi, 387 ft gain; easy run, 4.5 mi, 151 ft gain

Busy weekend outside of running, so we didn’t get out to the mountains this weekend. We met up early with a friend of Gene’s for the ride. Then after a long “transition” (coffee, snack, change of clothes), Gene and I took an easy loop around Green Lake.

Run Totals: 30.8 mi, 1812 ft gain

Other thoughts

The training plan talks about choosing a hill for intervals that will benefit your race. I knew our goal race has an estimated 7200 feet of gain but not how it was distributed. The course map shows the route but not the elevation profile. The trails are in the maps that Garmin Connect uses, so I plotted out the course. We know from our own experience that charting in the Garmin app for mountain trails ends up underestimating distance and gain (often by ~ 10-20%), but it does give sense of the profile.

Looking at the profile, I need to do hills more like Queen Anne for the hill workouts. But I also need to keep some of the easy inclines (Ha! Back east, 5% was the hard one!) and flat steady miles for our marathon that’s on the way to the ultra.

Gene

I’m not really following an official schedule. I created a running plan out of whole cloth that has me running four days a week, one of which is a trail run (most weeks). This week ended up being a bit of a cut-back week distance-wise, but overall pretty good I think.

Monday: 1 hour of strength at the gym.

I’m trying to keep up my core strength, and so I focus on free-weights, kettlebells, and balance exercises like single-leg deadlifts, rows, and medicine balls. We also have vague plans at a long obstacle-course race, so I need to work on upper body (and losing weight) as well.

Tuesday: 5.01 miles, 223 ft gain.

This was a pretty easy loop of Greenlake (Or Green Lake, god only knows). We live on a little ridge south of the lake, and so it’s about an 80 foot drop to the loop around it. I added a second run up and down the hill to get a little more gain and another half-mile compared to simply doing the lollipop.

Wednesday: Active rest.

For me, these days, active rest means I rode my bike to work, which is a total of 8 miles, with a pretty solid hill on the way home.

Thursday: 8.36 miles, 778 ft gain.

This was a beautiful, great-feeling run. I managed about a 10 minute pace while running a lot of gentle hills on the streets between my home and Green Lake (or Greenlake). I was paying attention to my heart rate, and it dropped significantly every time I started running downhill, which is fabulous for me. I was very pleased with this run and how I felt during and after..

Friday: Active Rest.

Saturday: 10.00 miles, 164 ft gain.

We wanted to do 12, but it was very humid and I sweat so much that my shoes were just sponges. Eventually, my insole started slipping and I was worried I’d get blisters as it bunched up under my foot. So we stopped and walked the rest of the way home. I am ashamed and embarrassed by how much I sweat. But I can’t do anything about it. It doesn’t get better as I get in shape or lose weight. I also chafed fairly badly despite a thick layer of Body Glide.

Sunday: Total of 39.2 miles of bike rides (elevation gain: 1100’ish) , 4.5 miles run (154 ft gain).

This was a good day. A long bike ride in the morning, for about 2:10, and then an easy 4.5 mile run after for a good brick. And then I rode another 4 miles each way two and from Seattle Pride.

Run Totals: 27.9 miles, and 1,322 ft gain.

That makes this a bit of a cutback week, somewhat for distance, and really for elevation, after doing more than a vertical mile the week before. But overall good; I felt good on my runs, I enjoyed myself, and I am not sore or injured at the moment beyond my lingering runner’s knee.

Other Thoughts

I’m doing a little better with food. For a while around our recent half-marathon PR (1:59:10!) I got in a headspace that was just “I can eat what I want! I’m fit af!” But that isn’t true. I put on about 6 pounds in a month, and now I need to do the hard work of taking it back off. I’m happiest when I’m at about 185. That’s where I look and feel pretty good when I look in the mirror. It’s been a while since I was consistently there. Each time I make it, some trigger in my head flips and I start thinking, “I made it! Now I can eat whatever again!” and it’s back on the yo-yo.

But overall I’m pleased with my fitness and my strength. I just need to maintain consistency and discipline to keep moving forward.