Training Log Archive: runninghils

Rode out to the hill on 6-mile road with Rich in Kalamazoo. This was pretty much the "biggest" (length and grade) hill around, but it ended up being only a little more than 4 minutes even when I started a little early. The one in West Branch is about a minute longer. Anyway, I did 4 repeats up it varying the resistance by shifting to try to do a minute at moderate resistance and 30 seconds higher. Sometimes didn't need to shift due to changes in the hill grade. This was challenging for sure, but it actually felt good to do it. HR got up to about 162 when I checked and breathing was hard on the hill. After this one, all the hills on the way home felt easy. We took about the last half hour really easy because Rich hadn't ridden much this year and the ride was only planned as a 1.5 hour ride anyway. So, just made that part social.

Only ran my watch for 12 minutes while I did the actual WOD, but we did a warm-up beforehand to walk through it.

Warm-up was to jog the course, do 10 push ups at the burpee station, and 10 walk outs and 10 squats at the box jump station.

Workout:
4 rounds for time: Run the .75 mile course and do the 3 exercises at the different stations: 10 burpees in the sand, 15 american swings (35 lb), 20 box jumps. About 12 minutes in, I was getting ready to run away with second place overall (trying to run away from Rich and Steve) but it was starting to rain with some thunder and the coach decided to call it when we got to the second round at the kettlebell station. He didn't want us holding large steel objects above our heads with lightening. So, I got in 12:36 with 1.5 rounds in. Average HR was 174 for workout part. Kinda bummed to not get to finish, but safety first.

Rode the red loop fully through including all the technical parts. Then, did another red loop but cut out a few parts to try to get back by about 1:30. Overall, it felt good. I realized after the failed bike test that I have to actually put in a "perceived effort" that is higher on the bike than I think it should be to actually be in zones 2-3. So, I tried to go faster, which is helpful for practicing technical riding as well. Almost crashed once in Granny's Garden, but miraculously held it together somehow. The course was a mix of hilly and flat, but there were a decent amount of hills - more than I usually see.

Brick with the bike wearing MS-1 pack - got off the bike and went for my run through the trails. Bit it pretty hard about 20 mins in. A bit scraped up and possibly covered in poison ivy since I landed in the plants, but a short walk and I was running again. Last 30 minutes were getting pretty tough. Why is this? We did 32 miles on foot at the Rage. I should be able to run 2.5 hours without serious temptation to walk it out toward the end. Tried to keep focusing on staying tall and keeping my hips forward. I know this is important and the focus is especially important when wearing a pack. I thought my bladder was leaking because my whole back was soaked. It was crazy because I guess it was just sweat. Used the Suunto watch and foot pod for distance and Tech4O for HR. Yeah, I had 2 watches going.

Accidentally cleared my bike computer before recording distance, so I'm not sure if this is exactly right.

Rode out from Barbara's house - rode about 25 minutes to get to some hills that would take about 75 seconds to ascend. Did 3x3 sets. During the second set, I realized that I was still probably going a bit to "aerobic" since the hills weren't quite as steep as I would have liked. So, I shifted into my hardest gear for intervals 5-9.

Rode at an elevated level for 20 mins after last interval then rode a steady state zone 2 back to Barbara's for 2 hours total. I thought about hopping on the Island Lake trails, but I know exploring trails tends to slow me down a lot, so I just stuck to riding around on the gravel roads.

Took the canoe out on a lake with Rich. He took the stern. It was SUPER windy, so we really got to put it to the test. Sometimes, we would be heading into the wind and the waves were getting pretty big and the boat would slam down after the wave, but water never wash over the bow. Even paddling perpendicular to the wind direction with the waves hitting the side of the boat, there were no issues and the boat felt super stable. The weird thing was that it didn't like to go straight with the tail wind.

We did 10 minutes steady followed by 2 minutes of intervals for the whole time, so we got to do 10 intervals in the 2-hour paddle. This time, I did a better job of keeping my shoulders more relaxed. Still, by the end of the paddle, I was tired in the arms/shoulders from holding my paddle with straight arms. I can't be expected to do it in a race if I don't practice right, so I held on.

Zones testing - some easy warm up riding and building up to LT and slowing back down. Recovered super fast and impressed Brad, who was doing my test. Unfortunately, there was some sort of issue with the test because it didn't give the right/complete data.

Darn, no HR data since BOTH of my HRMs are acting up right now. Seriously?
We just did one big group tonight instead of the normal "expert" and "pro" groups. Was a bit concerned, but it worked out. Though I had to time trial from the start of Redstone to the Jam store (about 5-6 miles) when I got caught sleeping as we rounded the corner and one guy sprinted out and I couldn't catch a wheel. At least that was the tail wind section of the course.

Got about a minute rest at the Jam store regrouping point and we were back off. Stayed with the group until about 5 miles from the finish where someone decided to throw in a sprint to break up the group. One other guy and I worked together to bring it on in. Good ride, overall, though - definitely a good workout.

C • What is your road bike? 3

WU - Run 400 then "normal" 4 min warm up

Strength:
Front Squat 5X5 EMOTM
Started at 100 lb, but after first round, coach was telling me I was bending my back rather than keeping it straight, so I dropped down to 95 and was able to keep it straight at that weight.

Workout: Tabata - 8 rounds each 0:20 on 0:10 off, 1 min rest between exercises -
Air squats - 114
Slam Balls - 79
Hand Release Push-ups - 51
Wall balls - 66
Total: 310

Rest 3 minutes, then:
Skill - Run 1 mile for time
TERRIBLE 7:45 Slower than my 5K pace. Guess I wasn't recovered from the workout
Note: HRM was having issue - not picking up for some reason. Battery shouldn't be dead since I haven't used this one much. I am heartless, perhaps.

Paddling on Lake Margarethe with Justin. He was in his C1 and I was in my kayak. Obviously, his boat was a LOT faster than mine so he didn't get as good of a workout. Set watch to intervals of 9 and 1 so I did 9 minutes at a steady pace and 1 minute hard - did 9 fast intervals. Fun time - tried to focus on keeping my arms straight and twisting at the waist for my technique. Need to try to relax my shoulders on the intervals - kept finding my shoulders up by my ears when I was trying to go fast.

Same route as yesterday's run, but kept it in zone 2 by walking some of the uphills - more toward the end. Knee bothered me a bit about 15 minutes in. Ended up stopping to stretch the hip flexors twice, but that did the job and it got better. They wouldn't work for AR, but I LOVE these Inov8 barefoot shoes. So comfortable for this run - compared to yesterday when I started getting a blister with the Salomons. I am going to look into a more protective shoe by Inov8 to see if that's the one for me.

C • I have Roclites, love them 6

Hanson HIlls - 1 full lap on the "main loop" and then I took the short cuts on the second lap to get back in 2 hours. This is my favorite trail in the state - fun and flowy. Sometimes, held back and slowed down on a few hills to keep HR in Z2-3. Kept the watch running the whole time except for when I got my call from work.

Great ride. Watch distance was definitely shorter than the bike computer distance.

Lap at Hanson Hills- running portion of my brick. Planned to do 2 hours, but right knee started bothering me. Stretched tight quad a few times, but toward the end realized that opening the hips and running with a longer stride seemed to help it. I think that the problem was more my hip flexors being tight than anything since I have had issues with that historically. I guess it's time to get back to stretching those on a regular basis.

Pine Haven ride. Plan was to warm up and then do a 45-60 minute Tempo ride on non-technical rolling hills and then ride to get a total of 1:45.
I picked Pine Haven because I thought that the trails were less technical than they were - I hadn't ridden there in a while. I knew the 2-tracks were there as a back-up. I warmed up on the single track and realized it was way too tight and twisty for a tempo ride.

So, at 16 minutes (AHR 122), I hopped onto the 2-tracks and started the "tempo" portion of the workout. It didn't go as well as I had hoped. One plus was that there were some soggy, soft sections of the trail that slowed me down as if I were going up a hill - sort of. I thought the 2-tracks were more straightforward than they were and I was slowing down a lot to check the map, decide where to go, etc. A lot of the downhills were too steep to actually pedal down. I had to choose between hills and non-technical. I struggled to keep the HR up in the tempo zone. I ended up going 1:11 on the "trying to tempo" section with an average HR of 138 because I was going too slow on so many parts. For cool down, rode single track, AHR was 124.

Note - Pine Haven is in ROUGH shape - trees down on single track, significant erosion on the 2-tracks, plants grown too close in to the trail. The 2-tracks are not set up well - they go straight up and down the hills. The "big hills" are so steep that you can't even ride up them. A bit unsure about the distance since it was based on my watch in the woods and I didn't notice that my transmitter/magnet weren't lined up properly for the first half of the ride.

Warm up activities

Strength: EMOTM 5 rounds
8 Overhead squats
Last time, 65 pounds bothered my shoulder a bit on the 5x5 every 2 minutes, so I decided to drop it down to 50 lb. This was perfect - challenging on 4th and 5th rounds to do 8 unbroken in about 30 seconds, but no pain.

Workout 1:
Run 800m
Then,
21*15*9
American KB Swings - 35 lb
Jumping Chest to bar pull-ups
Ring dips (red band)
13:08
Ring Dips always are challenging for me, but overall, I felt good for this

Workout 2:
20" box jumps - 4 every 15 seconds for 16 rounds
started out getting them in 8 seconds... 11 by the last few rounds.

Nice Ashtanga practice. Was feeling sore from yesterday and this morning's run, and it went away partway through, but it came back after shavasana. I had a pretty good headstand day today. I'm getting closer to not needing the wall for insurance.

Cruise Intervals
Warm-up 15 minutes. Then, 5x3 minutes hard followed by 2 minutes recovery. Heart rate got up to 171 and increased until last interval I was hitting 178 by the end of it. Just ran it home after 5th interval. Felt MUCH better than last week on this. I had a touch of soreness from yesterday, but nothing like last week where I was limping around.

400m run warmup
7 minutes of 10 shoulder pass-throughs, 5 high box jumps, and 10 burpees

Strength:
Every minute on the minute - 8 front squats
Did these at 95 pounds

Workout:
Every 0:45 do 1 squat snatch for 30 rounds
This is not my strongest lift and I had some shoulder issues with the OHS last week, so I decided to go moderately light and really focus on form.
Used first 10 to work up to 53 pounds, which I used the rest of the time.

Workout 2:
Every minute on the minute for 10 minutes
10 wall balls (14 pounds)
3 pull-ups (mixed grips) - did jumping pull-ups to try to get away from using the bands

We did the Sanford Lake Loop tonight. As usual, we alternated between pushing hard and a steady pace. The "second group" did a good job of staying together, though we broke into two at the overpass at US-10 when one group broke away. It was a bit unfair of a breakaway since those of us in the back had to wait for cars to pass. I tried to go with Tom to catch the breakaway, but couldn't quite hang on. The "chase" group of 10 riders kept a great pace, though, so all was not lost. Overall, a great ride.

"Hills and Thrills" course - out and back on first part

I went out 1:03 thinking that the ride back would be a little shorter. I wasn't expecting it to be as fast as it was - 48 minutes. I guess I underestimated the wind. There were also more uphills on the way out. People said that this was a really hilly course, but I wasn't that impressed. There were a couple good hills, but I expected the whole thing to be up and down with no flats. Also, it was on pretty busy roads. I need to find my own route that will be on less travelled roads with more hills. It was really nice scenery and there was one exciting moment when I surprised a couple deer and they ran right into each other, both falling down.

Major limiting factor today seemed to be more my legs than my lungs, which isn't too surprising since I raced hard yesterday.

Event: SmartBlast 6 Hour
 

We were in 4th much of the race, but pretty close in with the top teams. Started on foot for 2 close CPs, grabbed bikes and biked down to the canoes. We took my nice new canoe out with me using a kayak paddle and Brenda with her canoe paddle... not sure it was the best set-up, but we each used the equipment we were used to and it didn't seem to slow us down much, but I wanted to catch those guys!
Got back on bikes for a short ride to O-course 1 (about 3 miles) We made up some time getting a checkpoint a bit more efficiently that others weren't seeing. Then, we screwed up by taking the "North, slightly Northwest" road that was not on the map and mostly northwest. We went down and were looking for the CP by a pond/swamp area, but realized that we were too far to the west. You can't make 10 minute mistakes like this in a 6-hour race! Then, we got back on track and got the other two leaving tied with Hafkes.

We then moved on to some trail riding where we just had to follow the trail markers and look for the checkpoints along the way. This went pretty well.

O-course 2 was the deciding factor in the race. We went into it in 4th place. When we got to CP 21, there were the top 3 teams leaving saying they didn't get it and it wasn't there. We didn't believe them and went for it... and found it! We headed out for the last 2 foot CPs, but wasted at least 20 minutes trying to get 19 because we talked ourselves into the line on the map being the pipeline rather than power lines like we'd originally thought. Um, pipeline is usually marked as such. After we realized our mistake, we found it near the stream north of the power lines. Ugh. Finished the O-course and hammered the bike to the finish... and ended up about 7 or 8 minutes behind first place - HLS got CP 21 as well! This was a long course and about half the field missed the cut off. Bummer.

I think this was a case of needing to slow down to speed up. They like to make the points tricky at the Blast and I should have known that. I also shouldn't have let the "oh that pipeline looks so good" factor influence me. Still 2nd overall is not too shabby at all. :)

C • Girl power! 15

Warm-up:
Run 200 m, 4 rounds of 0:15 each Jumping jacks, push ups, mountain climbers, kips
30 shoulder pass-throughs
30 overhead squats with PVC against the wall

Strength:
Overhead squat - 5 every 2 minutes, 5 rounds
did 2 warm-up rounds at 45 and 55
did all 5 sets of OHS at 65 lb
Rt. Shoulder was starting to feel it a bit on the last two

Workout:
4 rounds for time:
Run 200m
30 ring push-ups (went on knees since ring push ups are that much harder)
15 toes to bar
Time - 23:10
Really struggled with the ring push ups and toes to bar today. Got as close as I could on the toes to bar, but probably didn't meet "games standard" on a lot of them.

C • You are awesome 2

Holy sore still... I need this to go away with the rest day tomorrow. First half mile, I gimped along, but eventually loosened up somewhat. The 4 accelerations actually felt pretty good on the legs. The downhills, while short and infrequent, were killer.

After my run at City Forest, I went to pull out the bike and found that I had left the front tire at home. D'oh! So, I had to drive home and just ride out from the house. Bummer. I rode mostly on the roads, but did get in two laps at the "Auburn Recreation Facility" which is really a weird place. It's a trail that goes around these two big rectangular depressions. Who excavated this area out and why? They advertise it as a "walking/running/sledding/cross country ski area"... and you can do all those things there, but it's just not a very long or interesting trail. The "sledding hill" looks like someone just piled up some dirt and planted grass on it. The trail is mowed grass.

Anyway, the goal was an hour with some short accelerations with the mountain bike on a trail. I partially achieved that.

Warmed up 17 min at about 145 HR. Was feeling sore, and it took about a half mile to get my stride smoothed out. Did 3 min intervals building up to HR of 170, slowed to a jog for 2 minutes, repeated for 4 intervals. Target was 4-5 intervals, but since HR was having a hard time getting under 160 even 2 mins after the 4th one, decided that 4 was enough. averaged about 155 for the rest of the run home, but felt like I had to go super slow to keep it under control

Union Loop + around the block to get to 45 minutes
4 x 2 minute race pace intervals in the middle
Easy pace otherwise.

warm up - 4 rounds of 0:15 each: Jumping jacks, air squats, mountain climbers, jump squats
Workout 1:
5 rounds for time:
Run 400m with 30 lb slam ball
12 burpees
Time - 15:26 (Fastest in the gym!)
Strength:
Deadlift - 5 every 2 minutes for 5 rounds at 75%
Was feeling a bit light headed during warm-up rounds so I only did 185 for the first 4 rounds. Felt great on round 4, so I did 195 on 5th round (1RM is 265)
"Skill"
12 Wall Balls, 9' target EMOTM 10 minutes
Tried to go heavy with 20 pounds, but took whole minute to complete round 7, so I rested 30 seconds and did last 3 rounds with 14 pound wall ball.

Foam rolled back and legs after class a bit. This was a long class - went over the normal amount of time.

Super easy and short run at City Forest with the Run Midland crew. Just what I needed to get the blood flowing but not overdo it. Was able to talk the whole time.
On a positive note, I was not sore from the ride yesterday and I felt decent today. Both days, the hamstrings were a bit tight, but that's all.

Jam store backwards. I didn't plan to do quite this much (was thinking more like 25 miles) but there were a bunch of people there to support me in my easy day of riding in place of slaughterfest... So, I agreed to go a little longer. It was a nice ride. A few times, my hamstrings started to burn/tighten up, so I just slowed it down. Gary was kind enough to stay back with me.

Trying to slow it down this week... also, my punch card was about to expire and I wasn't sure I'd make it on Wednesday, so I figured I'd get yoga in on Sunday.

"MAF" test - try to hold a heart rate of 148 for consecutive miles and record times for miles.
Warm up - 1.7 miles 18:36 - ran to Auburn Hotel and then to the track
Mile 1 - 11:22 - had a hard time holding the HR below 150, several times found it up around 155
Mile 2 - 11:48 - got into a rhythm and managed to keep the HR close to the correct number
Mile 3 - 11:45 - very close to mile 2.

Ran home - 0.6 miles

I know it sounds absurd since we just took 2nd at the Rage, but there is something wrong here - I should be able to hold something under 10:00 per mile at this heart rate- more like a 9:00-9:30... not this 11-12 minute/mile business. I AM feeling a bit worn out right now, though, so maybe it's just a function of that and next time I do the test it will be much better, though I doubt it will be in the range where I want it. Change is in the air.

I think I need to hire a coach. I just can't figure out what I need to do to improve. 2 years ago, I was getting slower and slower, it seemed. I was running and biking a lot, but most of my running was at a slow endurance pace. I was also a terrible hill climber. Try Crossfit Endurance, a teammate said - it drastically helped him improve his hill climbing. So, I did. Well, I built up the crossfit part for a while and was trying to implement the endurance part, but it was not working. I got slower. I had my worst 5K in memory this spring. I enjoy the crossfit and it's a good way to get strength in, so I kept it, but dropped it to 1-2/week and increased the running and biking leading up to the Rage. I must have timed that bout of overtraining just right because I felt good during the race and could push it pretty hard. However, I have NOT been able to recover ever since. My knee was hurt during the race, and that seems better now, but everything I do leaves me sore and tired. I am just emotionally drained and frustrated right now. The crying that never happened in the Rage is now happening for no reason. My mind tells me I need rest, but I don't want to. I think I just need someone to evaluate me and give me an exact plan and I'll do it. This is a task that I clearly can't do myself. I was able do do a nice running training plan when that's all I did, but now with multi-sport training in the summer butting up to ski racing season all winter, I am not managing it well.

C • You are a rock star 5