Working out at night - a new routine

Another solid week of training under my belt – two workouts and a long run of 16-miles. Another week above 80-miles with relative ease.

But what is it all for?

I have still yet to figure out what my focus is going to be for the upcoming winter/spring months.

I am in running limbo.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. I really think I just need to get back to racing, period – be it a mile, 5k or half marathon.  I need to get back the feeling of competing against the guy next to me and not the time running on the clock.

I’ve heard a lot of runners say, “If I don’t have a race to focus on, it is tough for me to stay motivated”.  For some reason, I don’t seem to have an issue of motivation in these limbo periods, but I am usually more excited by doing different workouts that were not present during marathon training.

You will not believe how short 300 meter intervals feel after doing 10+ mile tempos and 3-mile intervals all summer.

Back in high school we used to have a saying – “quality over quantity”.  This was meant for us to focus on the quality of the running we were doing, and not necessarily the number of miles we were running in a week.  Once again, putting in a honest, purposeful effort on a daily basis.

At some point, most likely in college, I lost focus of this mantra, and marathon training does not help.  This is not to say that I still do not put in an honest effort every day I train, but more of the fact that when training for the marathon, you tend to get caught up in one thing.

MPW.

Miles per week.  Unfortunately during a marathon build up I typically sacrifice how I am feeling, or lose track of how I am feeling, in order to hit an ultimate end number at the end of the week.  Smart, or not smart this is just the grind of marathon training.  That said, in these times of running limbo, I take the luxury to listen to my body a bit more, run less, and focus more on the quality and not the number at the end of the week.

Anyway, the moment, ya’ll have been waiting for, this past weeks training:

Tuesday: 11-miles in the morning solo around Highlands.  Hit up some solid hills in Hartshorne.

Wednesday: 4-miles easy in the morning to get my legs moving a little bit.

PM: Workout on the track at night at MU.

Recently I’ve been trying to workout twice a week, and I’ve been meeting up with Falvey, Tommy Friscia, Geoff Harrison and occasionally Pete on Wednesday nights at Monmouth University.  Meeting up with these guys has been great, and it is truly motivating to be meeting up with a group after work than battling the darkness by yourself.

This weeks workout was 5 x 1,000 meters with 2-minutes rest, with the last 200-meters of the K being hard.  While the volume wasn’t too much, it has been awhile since I have done intervals that short and fast.  The splits were as follows:

3:00, 3:02, 2:59, 2:57, 2:55

These Wednesday night workouts will serve as solid complementary sessions to the Saturday workouts.

Thursday:  So I had previously mentioned that I was getting a stress echocardiogram, and today was the day.

After a short day at work, I headed over to Monmouth Medical, where they hooked me up to an EKG machine, took some ultrasound pictures of my heart, and then threw me on the treadmill to get me running.  After about 7-minutes of walking/slow jogging, the doctor knew it was not going to be easy to get my heart rate up to 175 – the target they were shooting for.

They cranked the incline up every couple of minutes, and we chatting about running while I started to sweat all over the treadmill.  The doctor than put the treadmill up to the highest incline it would go (26% grade) and I lasted a couple of more minutes until they stopped the machine, and threw me down on a table as fast as they could to take ultrasound pictures of my heart under stress.

In all, the doctor said everything look good, outside of having an Athlete’s Heart – an enlargement of the heart that is typical amongst endurance athletes. This is abnormal compared to, well, normal people, but is common amongst distance runners, triathletes, etc. I then left the hospital and tact on another 8-miles to round at the day at 10.

Two cool things from the echocardiogram experience:

They shaved parts of my chest, therefore giving me a hot Man-o-Lantern look.  Too bad it was a couple weeks late of Halloween.

The doctor said that during the time I ran my heart output enough energy to keep 24.1 people alive.  Not exactly sure what that means, but it sure does sound cool.

Friday: 11-miles solo in Hartshorne. Nothing new here.

Saturday:  Workout at Monmouth.

Wanted to do a six mile tempo starting at 5:30 pace and then bringing it down to 5:00, but was struggling a bit more than I would have like, so I cut the workout to 3-mile (5:30, 5:25, 5:25), 2-mile (10:30), 1-mile (4:56).

Not exactly what I was looking for, but a solid workout nonetheless.  I think the Ks, combined with the test, and the hills on Friday had me feeling a bit sluggish.

Sunday: About 16-miles or so with Pat at Thompson.  Ran out to Doorbrooke and back.  Had some nice weather.  Pumped about his upcoming marathon debut in Vegas in a couple of weeks.

Monday: Ran from my place in the Highlands down to Rumson and back for 10.5.

In total, 81-miles on the week without too much effort. Really looking forward to seeing how adding a second workout per week consistently helps in some upcoming races – an 8k on Thanksgiving morning, an indoor mile (really?), and a ten miler in December.

Time to get back at it and have some fun.

- Craig

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