Weekly Summary – 150 miles in 15 runs. Super solid week of training with great recovery from last Sunday’s debaucle and three awesome efforts on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday – including a great 25 miles on Sunday. One more big week in this block coming up and then some recovery. 14 weeks to Boston!

Day AM Workout PM Workout Quality Miles Total Miles XT
Monday 5M reg 11M reg/4M reg 20.02 Upper body
Tuesday 12M EZ 9M EZ/mod 21.01 Hips
Wednesday 3M reg 15x1000m @ 3’03 avg, 500m jog rest in 2’40 9 23.01 legs
Thursday 10M reg 10M EZ 20.01 core
Friday 5M mod + 15x(2′ on/2′ off), 10M work in 59′ 4M reg 10 21.01 legs
Saturday 10M reg 7M reg 17.01 off
Sunday 25M w 12.5M mod (6’25), 12.5M @90% (5’48) 3M reg 12 28.01 core

Lunes, 6 Enero, 2014 – 10am: I was up early to go to the visa office right at 7:30am, but (after waiting for an hour) they told me that my application needed some kind of authorization still and I should come back in two hours. So, I got home quick, changed from my suit into running gear and ran an easy 5M around the park. It was probably good that I had to wait a few hours, though, as my body was still pretty beat up from yesterday. I didn’t look at my watch the whole time and wasn’t surprised to see I’d been running almost 9’00/mile pace. Total run 5M+ in 45’.

2pm: Ran again after my second trip to the visa office at which point they told me it still needed authorization and I had to come back tomorrow. Great. Ran another achy, slow 10 miles around the park and then another mile out to the gym and back. Total run 11M+ in about 90’.

6:30pm: Jogged easy to the gym. It was dark and raining, so I decided to finish shaking out inside on the treadmill. Ran another 5km very easy, then did upper body, then jogged back. Total run was 4M+.

XT: Upper body work in the gym. First time I’ve had access to weights/machines, which was nice. Consisted of: 3 sets of [Pushups (30x), tricep dips (20x), shoulder shrugs (12x w/ 15lb dumbbell), pull ups (5-8x), seated cable pull (12x @75lb), Bicep curls (8-12x @ 15lb), flutter (30x up/down)]. A good workout and fairly tough by the end.

Martes, 7 Enero, 2014 – 11am: Up early (again) to go to the visa office. This time, at least, they seemed to be ready for me and had my application ready. I paid the fee, dropped off my passport and hopefully can go pick it up this afternoon at 4pm! I really hope that is it…

Came back and ran at 11am. Felt super tired this morning, but actually felt pretty good running. Was planning to run 10M only but came through 10 in 75’ and was feeling fine so decided to run one more big lap. Finished at the market. Total run 20km, 12M+ in 1’33.

5pm: Easy/moderate run. Ran to the gym and then inside because it was pouring again and I didn’t have time to wait for it to pass. Ran a decent pace, legs feeling pretty decent today, so I’ll probably do the track workout tomorrow as planned. Total run was 9M with 10km in about 41’.

XT: Hips.

Miercoles, 8 Enero, 2014 – 10am: Slept super late. Very easy pre-workout shakeout. Total 5km+, 3M++ in 27’.

1pm: Workout Wednesday! Easy warm-up 6km+ around the park and then drills and strides before some work on the track. Goal was to run some 1000s at faster than Marathon Pace (somewhere between 10km and half marathon pace or about 105-100% of MP). This translated to about 3’00-3’10. The goal with these workouts is to work on mechanics at speeds faster than race pace and get a fairly high volume of work in. Especially given the altitude, this means taking a good amount of rest between reps which can make these workouts take forever.

I wanted to start out conservatively and progress over the course from the slower reps to the faster ones. This ended up working out well. The first 5 or 6 felt very comfortable at about 3’05-3’07. Rest was 500m jog in about 2’40.

Somewhere around the 8th to10th rep, I started to pick up the effort and was running more like 3’03. I got to 12 which was the minimum I’d wanted to do and was still feeling good, so decided to try to get to 15x and pick up the pace even more. 13 and 14 were 3’01 and then on the last one I closed very hard the last 200m to split 2’25/32 for 2’57. This felt very good, but I was glad it was over.

It was a very solid workout and it did take forever. I covered almost 15 miles just between the reps and rest. I kept the cooldown short and ended at the gym to do leg strength. This was quite tough as my legs were already very muscularly fatigued.

Total run was 20M.

Splits:

1 3’06.0
2 3’06.0
3 3’05.6
4 3’05.6
5 3’05.8
6 3’06.1
7 3’05.0
8 3’03.2
9 3’03.8
10 3’04.0
11 3’03.1
12 3’02.1
13 3’01.1
14 3’01.2
15 2’57.4

Average: 3’03.7

XT: Legs in the gym. Very tough as legs were already super tired. Tough day.

Jueves, 9 Enero, 2014 – 6am: Up super early to run with Gilad – a 2012 STRIVEr who happened to be in Quito on a college winter-term program. Great to see him and have some company! Ran to Foch to pick him up and then ran 1 big lap of the park very easy and back to his place. A very fun time. Tacked on afterwards around the park and stopped by the track to see the Silvio Guerra group. Chatted with Antonio for a while about marathon training which was great. Jogged back after. Total run 10M+ in 75’.

4pm: Ran around the park. Felt a bit sluggish so surprised to see the pace was relatively quick at the end. Started out slow but finished around 6’20s. I guess I am recovering quickly. Total run 10M+ in 72’.

XT: Core, 2 sets of 6’ and 8’ with 3’ plank at the end.

Ty with 2012 STRIVEr Gilad Doran in Quito

Ty with 2012 STRIVEr Gilad Doran in Quito

Viernes, 10 Enero, 2014 – 8:30am: Up kind of late and planned to sleep in but woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep. Decided to just move my schedule up a couple hours, so did my morning shakeout at 8:30am and planned workout for 11:30am. Very easy around the park and to the bakery. Total run 6km, 3M+++, NT.

11:30am: Feeling overtired and grouchy. Luckily just a light workout today. I started with 5M+ moderate around the park (9km in 39’) and then went right into a fartlek section. I wanted to do some quicker running today but nothing extreme. We had simply put “light fartlek” on the calendar. I decided to run 2 minutes on/2 minutes off with the “on” pace at MP or slower and the “off” pace at something moderate. I figured I would run a total of 10-20km of this depending on how I was feeling.

I ended up feeling a bit logey at first – possibly because of the longer warm up and going right into the quicker running with no stopping for drills, strides, etc. I ended up feeling a lot better in the second half of the workout and was able to relax a bit. I was originally thinking of stopping at 10km, but then I felt better and kept going to 15km and then decided to do one more since that would give me a nice even 15 reps.

Also worth noting that I took Gatorade with me on this run and practiced drinking every 15 minutes or so. No stomach trouble. I even purposefully tried some weird flavor that I wasn’t used to. Very good news.

Finished with a very short and easy cool-down before heading to the gym to do leg strength.

Total run was 27km (16.8M) in 1’47. 10M of “work” in 59’36. “On” pace ended up being about 3’37/km (5’50/mile) down to last two right at MP at 3’18/km (5’19/mile). The “off” was moderate at 4’00-4’10/km (6’25-6’40/mile).

Fartlek splits

1

 4’05.4

2

 3’46.9 7’52.3

3

 3’47.2 11’39.5

4

 3’46.5 15’26

5

 3’45.7 19’11.7

6

 3’45.3 22’57

7

 3’44 26’41

8

 3’45.5 30’26.5

9

 3’42.7 34’09.2

10

 3’41.2 37’50.4

11

 3’39.7 41’30.1

12

 3’41.2 45’11.3

13

 3’35.9 48’47.2

14

 3’35.8 52’23

15

 3’35.1 55’58.1

16

 3’38.3 59’36.4

XT: Legs at the gym again. Pretty tired.

Sabado, 11 Enero, 2014 – 10am: Alarm was set for 8am and promptly fell back asleep and slept til 9:30am. Super over tired yesterday and really needed the extra sleep. Plus, had trouble falling asleep last night.

Finally got up and did a very easy regeneration run around the park. Legs felt pretty tired so really just wanted some time on feet and to get moving. Felt better after but cut it at 10M because I had to get moving to get to Santo Domingo before dark.

5:30pm: Left my apartment at 12:35pm and got to my hostel and Santo Domingo (1,500 ft – essentially sea level) at about 5:20pm. A lot of this was because it took close to two hours to get from my apartment to my bus in Quitumbe (the south Quito bus station). Might be worth taking a different bus or a cab next time…

Anyways, ran a very easy shake out to just loosen up and get the bus ride out of my legs. Felt fine. Total run 7M, NT.

XT: Off. Finished running late and wanted to get dinner in me ASAP with a very early long run tomorrow morning.

Domingo, 12 Enero 2014 – 6am: Woke up at 4am to have some breakfast and coffee. Had a roll and banana and with Nutella and 1 cup of black coffee. Hung around until about 5am when I had another half cup of coffee and then just sipped water until it was time to go. Left right at 6am.

The goal for today was to run 40km (25 miles) with the first 20km (12.5M) at an easy/moderate pace (~6’25-7’00/mile, 4’00-4’20/km) and the second 20km at about 88-90% of marathon race pace (5’50-5’55/mile or 3’37-3’41/km). It was a bit intimidating on paper as this would be the longest run I’ve ever done and I was nervous after my disaterous long run last weekend where I bonked really hard and felt like I was going to need to go to the hospital.

It was still dark and cool when I left and so I tried to relax as much as possible for the first half of the run. Logistically, I had a kind of crazy scheme – I planned to run 5km from my hotel to the intersection of the main road and the “bypass” which is a very hilly road which skirts around the southern side of the city, connecting to the main road on each side. I carried two full gatorades with me when I left – leaving one at the intersection and running with the other 5km out and dropping it there. I then had a 5km out/5km back section of hilly road with a bottle at each end.

I took some fluids at this first 5km mark and then the plan was to run out and back on this 10km loop, taking fluids every following 5km. It felt good to drop of the other bottle at the 10km mark and I then had another 10km left in my “easy” part. I was feeling okay, but not great, and really had no idea how it would feel to shift gears. I actually liked the running back and forth a lot, because it helped me break up the run a lot in my mind. I thought of the two halves as separate runs – neither of which alone seemed too bad.

So, as I approached 20km in about 81 minutes, I simply told myself “alright, now it’s time to start the real workout.” And I actually felt way better than I thought I would changing into that higher gear. I was actually running too fast and ran the first 5km section in 17’30 – about 30 seconds under the pace I was looking to run. I felt really good and just couldn’t hold back.

From there, each subsequent 5k got harder. I was able to take my Gatorade at every 5km point with the unfortunate exception of 35km (22 miles). At this point, I either missed the bottle or someone had taken it (I was basically just leaving them on the curb, so it’s possible someone thought it was litter).

From 35-40km, I finished on the main road again which descends down towards Quevedo. This was to mimic the downhill at the end of the Boston course after the Newton hills. I expected to be able to just cruise, but the combination of missing my bottle and 22+ miles of running left me pretty spent. There was definitely no huge bonk as I’ve experienced before, but my pace slowed to close to 6’00/mile for a mile or so. The last 1.5-2 miles were pretty tough, but I managed to finish the last kilometer a bit faster (3’39).

In total, the first 20km was 80’44 (4’02/km, 6’28/mile) and the second 20km was 71’50 (3’35/km, 5’47/mile). The total run was 40km (24.9M) in 2’32’35 (6’08/mile, 3’48/km). Full splits below.

All in all, though, I was super pleased with the effort. Honestly, the biggest thing was relief that I didn’t re-encounter that horrible, horrible feeling I had last weekend after that long effort in Quito. Really, the only difference was the altitude (both weeks I ran about 150 miles, so I wouldn’t say I was more or less well rested…), so I’m going to blame it all on the thin air. I guess I will bite the bullet and make the achy bus journey down to the steamy jungle for these longer faster efforts.

Total run 25M.

Splits

1

 4’10.6

2

 4’3.8 8’14.4

3

 4’3.8 12’18.2

4

 4’3.2 16’21.4

5

 4’6.6 20’28 20’28

6

 4’2.2 24’30.2

7

 4’4.1 28’34.3

8

 4’1.7 32’36

9

 4’9.3 36’45.3

10

 4’7.8 40’53.1 20’25.1

11

 3’59.3 44’52.4

12

 3’56.2 48’48.6

13

 4’4.3 52’52.9

14

 3’58.9 56’51.8

15

 3’59.8 60’51.6 19’58.5

16

 4’2.3 64’53.9

17

 4’1.1 68’55

18

 3’50.9 72’45.9

19

 4’7 76’52.9

20

 3’51.5 80’44.4 19’53.0

21

 3’31.1 84’15.5

22

 3’24.7 87’40.2

23

 3’28.6 91’8.7

24

 3’34.4 94’43.2

25

 3’31.2 98’14.4 17’30.0

26

 3’41.9 101’56.3

27

 3’35.5 105’31.8

28

 3’32.4 109’4.1

29

 3’41.2 112’45.4

30

 3’35.6 116’21 18’06.6

31

 3’39.3 120’0.2

32

 3’29.9 123’30.2

33

 3’28.3 126’58.5

34

 3’38.6 130’37.1

35

 3’34.9 134’12 17’51.0

36

 3’37.4 137’49.4

37

 3’38.9 141’28.3

38

 3’43.7 145’12

39

 3’44.3 148’56.3

40

 3’39.4 152’35.7 18’23.7

5pm: Back in Quito, very, very easy shakeout around the park. Total run 3M++, 5km.

XT: Core, 5’ only.