Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Week 8, Training for 50K Trail Race

This is the start of week 8, which leaves me with 10 week still me event. I feel confident that things are progressing as they should and that I will be ready for my event on December 5th. 

Week 8 Training Plan: (28th September - 4th October)

Monday: Rest and Recovery, Mobility 30+ minutes.

Tuesday: Bike trainer 30 min, Strength 1 hour, Glute Activation 10 min, Run 3 miles.

Wednesday: Run 8 miles with 1 mile at sub 5k pace, Core strength 30 min.

Thursday: Bike 1 hour focus on cadence and a couple max sprints, Strength 1 hour.

Friday: 5 miles zone 2, Mobility 30 mins.

Saturday: Outdoor team ride 3.5 hours.

Sunday: Trail run 14 miles keeping Zone 2 as best I can with the hills.

One thing I need to take care of this week is a new pair of running shoes. I've already replaced my old trail runners, but now my road shoes are in need of retirement. My current road shoes just topped over 700 miles on them. Most running shoes recommend you change your shoes every 300-600 miles. Since I'm a smaller person and I haven't put mine through too much rain or races they haven't really been overstressed so I kept them a bit longer.

Lucky me, when I find a pair shoe shoes that work for me I generally buy several pairs since I know they change so frequently I hate having to go through the search every 6 months. This means I still have one more pair of Brooks Launch 5's that I can pull out and start using, but that also means I have to start looking for something new. The reason I have to look for something new is that Brooks is currently on version 8 of their Launch shoes. I had bought a pair of their 6's but they turned out to have changed them so much I only used those ones for 200 miles before I gave up. They were too heavy, stiff and the upper was very stiff as well. I was lucky to find a couple more of the version 5's so I ordered all I could get. 


Back to the training for now. Tuesday was fun, it started out with my 30 minutes on the trainer, then I ran out of time and had to get back to work. I ended up doing my 10 minute core program and 3 mile run a bit later in the day, which worked out well since it never got that hot.

Knowing it might get hot on Wednesday and I had an 8 mile run with one of those miles at 5k pace, I really wasn't looking forward to doing that in the heat. But, I got lucky as I ended up having time in the morning at 8:45 to start my run. Oh what a great time to have run as it was only 62 degrees when I started. Even when I finished it was still in the low 60's though you would never know it seeing as I was drenched in sweat. Ick!

The end of the week training got switched around due to my 5 year Wedding Anniversary on Saturday. I knew I wasn't going to be able to manage the 14 mile run on Sunday morning, so we switched the long run to Saturday morning, and the bike ride to Friday. Unfortunately the air quality was terrible on Friday so I ended up having to do a 2 hour indoor trainer session, but I got it in and felt great after. 

Saturday morning I got up late and didn't eat breakfast before my run. Instead I brought breakfast with me and started eating as soon as I started my run. This normally has been fine for my runs up to 12 miles. However, today was not so. At about mile 5 I was already feeling pretty tired compared to how I normally feel on the trails. I do however have to say this week I chose to go up PG&E trail which I haven't done in a way too long. I'd also forgotten how much steeper PG&E is compared to Rogue Valley which I normally ascend. By mile 5.75 it hit the junction between heading back down the Rogue Valley trail and finishing my miles on the flats, or to keep going up the steeper part of PG&E for the next mile and a quarter. Due to feeling tired and possibly under nourished I opted for descending and hitting the flats to finish. This turned out to be a wise choice as I was struggling just to finish my last 2 miles on the flats. In all this was still a great fun and I took some short video clips while out there that you can watch here

Sure enough Sunday came along and I was feeling a bit in need of recovery from the previous nights alcohol enjoyment. I planned on doing my final run n the afternoon, but all day I was feeling nauseous and decided to just not push it. Instead I did spend some time doing my mobility routine and that was all I could get in.

With all the mention of Zone 2 training these past few weeks I have decided to write a blog post about what that actually means. If you are interested in reading that, here is the link

 

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