Training Log Archive: jfredrickson

Brisk warmup to Institute Park for a workout. Feeling quite tired from all the racing yesterday. It's interesting because after the race I was so high on adrenaline that I didn't really feel tired. But after I got home I just about passed out on my bed from exhaustion. I definitely felt it on this warmup run. It is probably a combination of the race and the cold I am still fighting though. I still haven't got my voice back, although my throat feels a lot better. Maybe with another rest day I will be fully back.

On another note, a girl on our team was riding her bike to the park because she has an injury, and just after she passed us on the sidewalk she got hit right in front of us by a car pulling out of a driveway. She took a nasty spill but only really scraped up her knee. It was amazing to see how fast the police and ambulance showed up though. It is quite comforting to know that there are so many people out there just waiting to help you in a nasty situation like this.

Anyway, I think she will be fine.

Ran another pyramid 5-mile tempo run at Institute Park. We did repititions of 2 minutes hard, 1 minute easy, 3 minutes hard, 1 easy, 4 hard, 2 easy, all along the 5-mile course. I decided to go out hard with T-Mac and just try to hold onto for as long as I could. I managed to get to about the 3 mile mark again before I was just too exhausted to hold on any longer. After that it was pretty brutal just to get around the last 2 laps.

My time was more than a minute slower than last week, although the pyramid scheme was different. I thought that the scheme we did today should have been faster, but even T-Mac was slower than last week and he was moving pretty fast all the way through. Anyway, definitely a very tough workout considering tired I was.

After the workout coach decided to have us do a 1-mile timed run at Elm Park just to work on mental toughness. I was actually excited to be able to give this a shot even though I was so exhausted. Somehow it felt good to finally feel so exhausted from training even though it is probably due more to this cold my body has been fighting than anything else.

Anyway, this was just a quick jog from Institute Park to Elm Park. I was so tired I had to just focus on the pavement in front of me and the world actually felt like it was spinning for a little while. Real trippy stuff!

Wow this was weird. I went out hard again just to see how long I could hold the pace. T-Mac kept trying to pass me but I held him off for at least the first 250m, but my body was just too far gone to fight. After T-Mac pulled ahead Dan started to catch me in the second 800m and I had to fight with him for a little while. But I was able to push through that and pull ahead again before the last 200m or so. I was so tired both physically and mentally that it was a really trippy experience finishing up.

I am pretty surprised that I was able to run a 5:25 considering how tired I was and how much it hurt, but I guess a 5:25 isn't that fast for me anymore. T-Mac ran an impressive 5:09, not bad for a post-workout mile.

A brisk cool-down with T-Mac back to the Kneller from Elm Park. I was way too exhausted to run the pace, but I really felt in the zone and just focused on getting one foot in front of the next. It kind of felt like finishing up the Highlander back in the day.

It really feels good to have such a tough day like this. It has been a while since I have felt truly exhausted from a workout, and it somehow feels much more rewarding this way even though it probably wasn't as good a workout as if I had been feeling stronger. Perhaps I gained some mental toughness though. Anyway I need to focus on fully recovering from this cold so that I can be back to full strength for this weekend. I certainly won't be able to rely on adrenaline to boost me up like yesterday.

Event: 2006 Sprint Series Finals
 

Warmup for first sprint. Feeling pretty crappy.

Took this one easy since I was in a fairly slow heat. Vlad tried to push the pace right out the start so I just settled in behind him. Then he blew number 3 pretty bad so I had to relocate fast since I hadn't really been reading the map. After that I led the way for the rest of the race, maintaining an easy pace. Mikey and his group caught us at number 11 and so I ran with him for the rest of the way until he ran away from me at the finish. It was cool to see him win his heat. It was even cooler to win my heat without beating a single person in any of the other groups :) And Erin rocked it too with the fastest time on the course, so HVO won 3 out of 4 in the first round.

Warmup for the second sprint. Feeling a little bit better, but a bit weak. Worried that I wouldn't have the stamina to keep up on this one.

Decided to push the pace out of the start and try to get a bit of a lead just in case I ran out of steam half-way through. Ran the first 7 in the lead, but no matter how fast I pushed it and how perfect I navigated, every time I looked back there was a group of people right on my tail. At 7 I decided I didn't want to get my shoes wet crossing the swamp so I went back out and around the swamp. Ross led the way across the swamp and took the lead, but then took the left route along the next swamp while I went right. Ross beat me into the control, but I was just ahead of Mikey. Then I just followed Ross he hit the road at 10 and stopped apparently not sure of where he was. I of course had been focused on keeping up with Ross and hadn't really been reading the map so I quickly went right out to the field to relocate then came back to attack 10. Ross hit it at the same time and led the way to the next 2 controls. I passed him going to 13 and was able to pull away after that. Had to push it all the way to the GO control before I realized it was just me and Mikey in the finish chute.

Not a bad race at all. Felt great the whole way through, and fortunately the terrain was thick enough that we couldn't really push the pace high enough for me to really be hurting. It was good to see that my technique was still there at high speeds when I was actually navigating.

Warmup for the Final sprint. The heat had gone way up and the warmup area was in a field in direct sunlight. I started to feel quite exhausted from the sun, so I tried to stay in the shade as much as possible. Other than that I was feeling mostly cleared up. I did everything I could to pump myself up to be ready to go out fast.

Mikey and Eric Bone started out very fast taking the first two controls. Then Eric looked a little unsure on the beginning of the third leg so I decided to take the lead and push the pace. He fought back after the 3rd control and pushed ahead on the road at the beginning of the 4th leg, but then he started running too far down a path that we needed to cut off of so I took the lead again and held it through 6. In the middle of the 7th leg I got confused by all the buildings in the campground and ended up drifting too far right. I noticed when I hit the big trail leading into the finish area and corrected by running through the field and getting to the control just after Eric. From there I just held onto Eric through the map exchange and all the way to control number 7 on the second map when he made a mistake just before the control. We were approaching a bunch of buildings out of the woods and I guess he didn't read them correctly because he slowed down and started going in the wrong direction. I recognized the building as the one we had passed right before number 4, and so picked it up immediately on my map. Fortunately Mikey was just ahead of me in the pack and so followed Eric. I managed to get about an 11 second lead on them and with only 2 controls left that pretty much wrapped up the race. Mikey pushed it hard at the end though and ran away from Eric taking second place.

This was an absolutely awesome race and fortunately I felt great throughout the whole thing. Maybe all the adrenaline masked any exhaustion I was feeling from my cold. There is nothing like running a fast, technical sprint and this one was an absolute blast.

It was especially nice to be able to realize one of my bigger goals for the year. I trained hard for this race and it was really depressing to be going into the race sick and feeling so crappy. I knew that I was in the best shape I had ever been in, and that made it even more frustrating. It was such a good feeling to realize that I was able to push hard and stay with the top guys, and especially to have my techique in such good shape at the same time. The Final was a real fight and when I saw Eric and Mikey making a mistake on number 7, my heart skipped a beat in excitement. I had a sinking feeling of nervousness rounding the building into 7 with the knowledge that if I wasn't right I had just blown my race. But I was confident enough to follow through and the control was right where I expected it to be. That gave me a huge shot of adrenaline and from there it was just a blast through number 8 and out to the GO control in the field. You rarely have the opportunity to run down the chute and know that you have done everything right and taken home the victory, and it was an amazing feeling. This will memory will surely be a great motivator for me in my training as I know that that is what got me to this point today.

C • Bonner Park Test Loop 2

Sprint #1 - Long - Splits

Sprint #2 - Long - Splits

Sprint Final - Long - Splits

Event: 2006 Sprint Series Finals Festival
 

Warmup for the farsta.

Ran the first half of a Farsta. Felt good at the beginning but ran out of steam about half-way through. Body is still feeling spent from this cold.

Hmm... Another day off. Had trouble sleeping last night. Every time I would start to drift off I would eventually feel the impulse to swallow and the pain would give me a shot of adrenaline that would wake me up again. Was up until at least 3 as far as I can remember.

The back of my throat at the very top is so dry, it feels like sandpaper. It's not so bad as long as I don't have to swallow, but for some reason I have the urge to swallow all the time. Is that normal or is just because I am thinking about it all the time when I am trying to sleep?

Ugh. I will try some running tomorrow. Hopefully my throat won't give me any problems. At least I will be well rested for Sunday...

Got a good night's sleep but still felt weak all day so decided to try for another day off just to be careful. My throat is killing me.

A brisk warmup run to Institute Park for an interval session. Feeling much better than yesterday but still quite weak. Thought hard about skipping the workout but decided to give it a shot and see how it felt to run hard.

5-mile workout in Institute Park. Ran hard, easy intervals as follows: 1 hard, 1 easy, 2 hard, 1 easy, 3 hard, 1 easy, repeat. I actually felt decent for the first 3 miles and stayed up in front with T-Mac, but after the 3 mile mark I just felt exhausted and couldn't hold the pace. Managed to get a pretty decent time for the workout anyway though. I just hope I didn't push too hard to allow my body to fully recover from this cold before Sunday. I should be able to get a lot of sleep tonight though, so we will see how that feels.

A brisk cool-down run back to school. I felt pretty exhausted. Hopefully I can still recover from this.

I came down with something nasty last night. My body felt like it had been run over by a steamroller and I was so exhausted that I couldn't even sleep. I spent the night tossing and turning and woke up feeling like crap. I think I will take today off just to be sure that I recover from whatever this is. Hopefully I will be able to get lots of sleep this week to really recover from this.

C • Seriously... 4