Weekly Summary – 151 Miles in 14 runs. This was the first full week I’ve had with no big interruptions (like international air travel with felines). And the results speak for themselves. A lot of running this week with two really good workouts and one brutal long run. Definitely beginning to adjust to the training load, altitude, and lifestyle. 15 Weeks to go to the 2014 Boston Marathon!

Day AM Workout PM Workout  Quality Total Miles XT
Monday reg reg 22.01 Upper body
Tuesday 6x400m Hills + 2x10x200m + Legs reg 4 20.01 Legs
Wednesday reg reg 20.01 Hips
Thursday 20km in 1’09’34 (3’28/km) reg 12 22.01 core
Friday 10M EZ 11M EZ 21.01 legs
Saturday reg reg 20.01 Hips
Sunday 35-40km w 4x5k @85%, 15km@90% reg 18 26.01 core

Lunes, 30 Diciembre, 2013 – 6am: Ran early to finish before going to the visa office (which turns out was closed… womp, womp). Very easy 10km shakeout around the park. Total run 6M++.

4pm: Took a nap this afternoon after the early morning and ran easy long-ish around the park. Felt pretty bad at first but warmed up after a while and felt much better by the end. Ended up running just under 16M, finishing at the market and then jogging back. Total run was 16M+ in 2’00.

XT: Upper body. Pushups, dips, back.

Martes, 31 Diciembre, 2013 – 9am: Slept for a long time after not enough sleep yesterday. Woke up and did easy pre-workout shakeout around the park and to the bakery. Total run 5km+, 3.5M, NT.

1pm: Speed day. A super long workout (time-wise). Took forever. Left the house and 1pm and wasn’t back until after 4pm (and not done with the leg strength until after 4:30pm! Sheesh – no wonder I’m sleeping so much.)

Anyways, the workout was focusing on turnover and top end speed for form/efficiency. Started off with 5M easy around the park (~34 minutes) and then ran up to the big NNUU hill. Stopped and did strides and then did 6x400m all out hill sprints. These were super hard both muscularly and aerobically (in the latter half) and so rest was about 5’ between each. Felt good though and definitely felt better on the latter ones than the earlier ones.

Took some Gatorade after this because it was very hot and I was feeling dehydrated and then jogged 1M back to the track for some 200s. These were supposed to be two sets of 10x200m (20 in total) at a quick but not straining pace.

The first set felt quite good. I was running 31.x-32.x fairly comfortably and the 2’00 jog rest felt like plenty of time. I ran the last one in the set a bit quicker but still not all out (29.6).

I took 5’ jog between sets and had some more water. It was still very hot. The second set was uch tougher as my legs began to feel very tired muscularly from all of the day’s fast volume. Still, very consistent as all were between 30.1 and 32.4. Again, the last one was the fastest. Ended up averaging 31.9 for set one and 31.6 for set 2, so 31.8 overall.

I cooled down briefly around the park but had already accumulated a lot of mileage and just wanted to get inside and drink some coconut milk. Finished with leg strength.

Total run 17M+.

Splits
6x400m hills, all out, 5’ recovery
10x200m (2’ jog): 32.9, 33.5, 31.8, 32.6, 32.4, 30.9, 32.6, 32.1, 31.3, 29.6 (avg 31.9)
5’ jog
10x200m (2’ jog): 31.8, 31.5, 32.0, 32.4, 32.7, 32.1, 30.9, 31.4, 32.0, 30.1 (avg 31.6)

Total avg: 31.8

XT: Leg circuits. Legs were pretty spent from a very long and muscularly taxing workout.

Miercoles, 1 Enero, 2014 – 12am: Happy New Year! With no real plans, I decided to welcome 2014 with a run around La Carolina. It was really awesome. Fireworks were going off everywhere and reverberating across the park and buildings. People were burning their effigies so there were little bonfires all over and were generally rowdy and friendy. It was great. Nothing like a shirtless run through down town Quito at midnight to remind me that my life is in a very interesting place! Total run 5km, 3M.

12pm: Slept late and ran very easy around the park. Felt decent once I got moving, just a lazy morning. Total run 10M+ in 1’17.

5pm: Another easy run around the park. Felt fine, kept pace easy with a workout tomorrow. Total run 12km+, 7.5M+ in 59’.

XT: Hips.

Jueves, 2 Enero, 2014 – 9am: Slept well and long last night. Very easy shakeout around the park and down to the market and back. Total run 6km, 3M+++, NT.

1pm: Workout today. 20km steady at 90-94% of MP. I am planning to go to sea level on Sunday and so decided to try this workout at altitude. 90-94% is 3’37-3’29/km, which would be pretty easy at sea level but was a bit intimidating to do at altitude.

Ran an easy warmup 6km around the park and then did drills and strides before the workout.

Workout felt really good. Wanted to start out slower and progress in the middle/end if I felt good. And I felt very good at the start. Running around 3’35 pace felt very comfortable and easy, even at altitude. I was quite surprised by this actually. First 5km were 18’00 which felt like I could run that pace all day.

Picked it up over the next 5km to pass 10km in 35’44 (17’44 5km), but still felt super comfortable. From there, I tried to run right about 3’30/km for the remainder. I didn’t want to go too much faster until maybe the last few km at which point I’d let myself run a bit harder. Between 11-18km, I ran very consistent between 3’27-3’30, passing 15km in 53’13 (17’29 5km).

I picked up the pace a good bit in the last 3km, running about MP (3’19) and then closing very hard the last 2km (3’05/3’00), running the last mile in 4’50. This brought the overall pace down a good bit. The total 20km was in 1’09’34 (16’21 last 5km) and an overall average of 3’27.8/km (5’35/mile).

Overall, this was a super strong workout. I wasn’t sure how I’d respond to these long, aerobic efforts at altitude, but clearly this pace is possible to run quite far. I have no doubt I could have run at least another 5km at 3’30 given how fast I ran the last 2km. Also worth mentioning – this was run on 5km super flat loops of road, so it is likely that the lack of hills made the altitude much more manageable.

One other thing I forgot to mention – I did take Gatorade every 5km (5k, 10k, and 15k). The first time I think I swallowed too much and had some nasty cramps for a few minutes, but after that I was sipping slowly and it seemed to go down okay. This is why we practice…

Cooled down around the park short about 4km, already a big volume day.

Total run 30km, 18M+++.

 

Splits (from garmin)

1

 3’37.9

2

 3’35 7’12.9

3

 3’36.3 10’49.2

4

 3’35.6 14’24.8

5

 3’35.5 18’00.3

6

 3’32.2 21’32.5

7

 3’32 25’04.5

8

 3’31.2 28’35.7

9

 3’31.3 32’07.0

10

 3’37 35’44

11

 3’29.2 39’13.2

12

 3’29.9 42’43.1

13

 3’29.4 46’12.5

14

 3’29.4 49’41.9

15

 3’31.6 53’13.5

16

 3’27.6 56’41.1

17

 3’27.6 60’08.7

18

 3’19.7 63’28.4

19

 3’05.7 66’34.1

20

 3’00.3 69’34.4

XT: Core – 2 sets of 5’ and 6’ with 2’30 plank.

Viernes, 3 Enero, 2013 – 11am: Ran late after a trip to the migracion office this morning. A bit tired from getting up super early to go sit around for hours. Felt okay once I started going, though. Total run 10M+ in 75’.

4pm: Ran around the park and then to the gym for legs. Jogged back after. Total run 11M+ in 77’.

XT: Legs – at the gym finally! Able to use weights for this instead of a broomstick in place of the bar.

Sabado, 4 Enero, 2013 – 10am: Slept late again after not getting enough sleep last night. Ran longer in the morning so I could take the afternoon easy before long run Sunday morning. Total run 13M+ in 1’35.

5pm: Very easy run around the park. Pace purposefully easy. Total run 7M++, 12km in 55’.

XT: Hips.

Domingo, 5 Enero, 2013 – 8am: Up at 5am and had black coffee and some bread and bananas before the workout. Fairly hard long run planned for this morning. Goal was 35-40km with 4x5km (1km easy recovery) and then 15km steady. I had originally planned to go down to Santo Domingo at sea level for this but had a scheduling snafu that kept me in Quito. In retrospect, this was almost certainly a mistake.

I left and went right into the 5k reps. The pace was supposed to be 3’48/km or just over 6’00/mile. I was running on the ciclopaseo which is hillier than I’m used to running on so the km splits weren’t super even but each 5km was pretty close to on target. I felt like I was running at a good but not killer effort on these. I was actually feeling fairly confident at this point. The 5k splits were: 18’59.0, 18’56.9, 19’03.7, 18’42.5. The recovery kilometers were all around 4’15-25 (around 7’00/mile). This brought me to 15 miles in 1’33’22 (6’13/mile or 3’52/km avg).

I was also taking Gatorade after each rep. This is something I’ve been practicing. Still, I had almost 10 miles of hard running left and my legs were feeling a bit tired already.

I decided to run the 15km segment around the Carolina, since I know it super well and it’s a bit flatter. I ended up running about 1km at the correct pace and then started slowing down and hurting badly. Very quickly, I realized that this was not going to get better. I was running over 6’00 pace and this was supposed to be faster than the previous sections (around 5’50 pace).

I started cramping really badly all over – in my legs and hips and torso and shoulders. I was still taking Gatorade every 15-20 minutes, but it didn’t seem to be helping. I had slowed down to about 4’00/km or 6’25/mile and there was no way it was getting faster. Finishing one lap at 37km, I decided to call it quits.

I had a particularly miserable 90 minutes after I stopped running. I’ve felt crappy and out-of-it after long runs before, but nothing compared to this. I couldn’t think straight; my whole body felt just off. It was very hard to describe. Luckily, I’m still here.

I think the big moral of the story – and after talking with my coach, Jon, we’re in agreement – is that these very long and hard runs need to be done at a lower elevation. While a 15-20km tempo run might be possible up here, running for 35-45km at a good pace is just not feasible. The body is burning sugar so much faster that it’s impossible to replenish fast enough to keep from having this kind of horrible late-stage bonk due to glycogen depletion. Next week, I’ll go back to Santo Domingo.

The total run was 37km (23 miles) in 2’27’21 (3’58/km or 6’24/mile)

Splits

1

 3’47.9

2

 3’51.3 7’39.2

3

 3’43.1 11’22.3

4

 3’46.5 15’08.7

5

 3’50.2 18’59

6

 4’20.8 23’19.8

7

 3’40.1 26’59.9

8

 3’51.9 30’51.8

9

 3’45.6 34’37.4

10

 3’49.8 38’27.2

11

 3’49.5 42’16.7

12

 4’38.5 46’55.2

13

 3’42.9 50’38.1

14

 3’51.5 54’29.6

15

 3’54.4 58’24

16

 3’47.2 1’02’11.2

17

 3’47.7 1’05’58.9

18

 4’19.7 1’10’18.6

19

 3’42.7 1’14’1.2

20

 3’38.9 1’17’40.2

21

 3’49.2 1’21’29.4

22

 3’41.9 1’25’11.3

23

 3’49.8 1’29’1.0

24

 4’21.7 1’33’22.8

25

 3’35.8 1’36’58.6

26

 3’46.1 1’40’44.7

27

 3’52.9 1’44’37.6

28

 4’8.5 1’48’46.1

29

 3’59.7 1’52’45.8

30

 4’11.4 1’56’57.2

31

 4’27.44 2’01’24.64

32

 4’22.6 2’05’47.24

33

 4’0.4 2’09’47.64

34

 4’25.9 2’14’13.54

35

 4’20.8 1’18’34.34

36

 4’33.2 1’23’7.5

37

 4’13.9 2’27’21.44

 

6pm: VERY slow and easy shakeout around the park. Total run 5km, 3M+, NT.

XT: Core, 5’ only because I was exhausted.