Weekly Summary – 116 miles in 12 runs. Great recovery from last weekend’s marathon victory and then a good jump back into the mileage. Two light workouts (progression run and 200 repeats) on Wednesday and Friday and then a very solid long session (15x mile @ 50K pace) on Sunday. Less than 4 weeks to go!

If you don’t know about the Road to 50K, check out the announcement post from last week and follow along at Road to 50K site designated to covering the event. And of course, you can follow me day to day on Instagram and Twitter (@TylerCAndrews) and my daily training log on Strava (GPS included!). Don’t forget to check out STRIVE’s 2018 Programs – we’ve still got a few spaces available for high schoolers, college interns, and adults! You can come do service work and train with me in Peru or Kenya and for the summer of 2018, we’ll once again have programs for High School and College students, and even 10-day trips for adults and families, so be sure to take a look if you’re interested in an amazing summer experience!

Lunes, 12 de Marzo, 2018 – 9am: Easy run around the park. Easy and short today w/ recovery block. Legs felt good – better than yesterday. Up a bit late last night with Mr. C’s surprise party. 1 big lap in 16’45 and then to the track 8km in 36’xx. 6x strides, 200m in 31.1. Very good! Easy jog home. Glad to keep it on the grass these few days. Total run 10km+ in 43’.

PM: OFF – recovery block and no PM run. Hung around w/ the VC and dinner at Zazu.

Martes, 13 de Marzo, 2018 – AM: Off – recovery block. Travel w/ VC and Mar to Mindo.

4pm: Ran in Mindo out/back on mariposario dirt road. Lovely run but pretty muddy. Only about 6km out/back on the road (all up on the way out, all down on the way back, running 3’30s which felt nice. Ran around town after that, scoped out a couple different loops but stuck w/ the original one from last time. Will wheel in the evening before tomorrow AM’s workout. Total run 13km in 54’.

Miercoles, 14 de Marzo, 2018 – Sparknotes: 10km split prog in 32’09 w/ 5K @ 16’19, 3K @ 9’44, 2x1K @ 3’03, 3’01 (~1’ jog b/w). Hot!

8:30am: Woke up much later than I’d planned as I decided I’d rather sleep more even if it meant doing the workout in the hotter part of the day. Warmed up 5km on the dirt and then changed into tracers and ran over to the loop I’d wheeled out the night before. Turned out to be 270m, which is shorter than I’d thought it was when I did the 1600 workout here last month. Probably explains why those 4’30s felt so good, because they were really more like 4’40s.

Anyway, did a few strides and then one easy lap to try to get the pace. The goal was to do 10km starting I figured a bit slower than 50K pace, running a good chunk right at 50K pace, and then finishing a bit quicker.

I started out right at 3’20/km was running very comfortably at 3’15-20 right out the gate, so I decided to just stick with that and figured I’d do most of the run right around 3’15. This felt pretty good through about 3km but then I think I just really started to overheat as the sun was out strong and I just felt awful.

I decided to run through 5km (16’19) and then take a quick pause to let the HR come down. From there, I started out a bit quicker but pretty quickly feeling like I was redlining again and slowing down, so I took another pause after 3K (9’44) so I could try to really run the last 2km quicker instead of just slogging through.

This ended up working well. I wasn’t sure if I’d do 4x500m or 2x1K, but the 1Ks actually felt pretty comfy at 3’0x pace and it felt good to close quicker. Last km was quickest which is always good.

Anyway, this wasn’t exactly what I’d planned, but I knew it would be tough when I woke up so late given the equatorial sun here in Mindo. Definitely felt good to get in some quicker running after 3 easy days and not a bad sessions 4 days after running 2h20.

Cooled down easy around town. Total run 20km.

0.27 km 0’54.1 (0’54.1) 115
0.54 km 1’47.6 (0’53.5) 147
0.81 km 2’41.1 (0’53.5) 159
1.08 km 3’34.0 (0’52.9) 167
1.35 km 4’26.7 (0’52.7) 168
1.62 km 5’19.8 (0’53.1) 173
1.89 km 6’11.6 (0’51.8) 172
2.16 km 7’06.0 (0’54.4) 173
2.43 km 7’58.8 (0’52.8) 163
2.70 km 8’50.5 (0’51.7) 175
2.97 km 9’44.2 (0’53.7) 175
3.24 km 10’37.8 (0’53.6) 161
3.51 km 11’30.2 (0’52.4) 174
3.78 km 12’23.9 (0’53.7) 158
4.05 km 13’17.2 (0’53.3) 170
4.32 km 14’11.1 (0’53.9) 169
4.59 km 15’05.0 (0’53.9) 158
4.86 km 16’00.0 (0’55.0) 145
5.02 km 16’19.8 (0’19.8) 156
5.29 km 17’11.1 (0’51.3) 156
5.56 km 18’03.5 (0’52.4) 176
5.83 km 18’55.7 (0’52.2) 178
6.10 km 19’46.8 (0’51.1) 179
6.37 km 20’39.7 (0’52.9) 173
6.64 km 21’33.1 (0’53.4) 178
6.91 km 22’27.4 (0’54.3) 178
7.18 km 23’21.6 (0’54.2) 176
7.45 km 24’16.3 (0’54.7) 177
7.72 km 25’11.6 (0’55.3) 177
7.99 km 26’04.2 (0’52.6) 179 (9’44.4)
8.26 km 26’51.9 (0’47.7) 159
8.53 km 27’42.6 (0’50.7) 173
8.80 km 28’33.2 (0’50.6) 179
9.07 km 29’22.4 (0’49.2) 178
9.34 km 30’09.7 (0’47.3) 156 (3’03.5 km)
9.61 km 30’59.9 (0’50.2) 166
9.88 km 31’49.8 (0’49.9) 179
10.15 km 32’38.4 (0’48.6) 180 (3’01.5 km) – (3’16.0)

Jueves, 15 de Marzo, 2018 – 8:20am: Ran in Mindo out/back on mariposario dirt road and then found a great road on the other side of town which went way the heck out into the cloud forest. Really beautiful and hilly run through virgin forest with lots of wildlife sightings. Beautiful day as it wasn’t too hot but still some sun. Really magical. Finished with 6x strides and ~200m (garmin) in 34.x on the dirt. Total run 20km in 1h30.

XT: Toes

4:15pm: Back in Quito, ran solo around the park. New clockwork doubles as I’m trying to do these as 11km instead of 10km. Ended up doing most of that extra just on the track because I miscalculated. Still felt good, despite basically hopping out of the car after a 2h+ journey from Mindo to Quito and getting right at it. 4x strides on the track. Total run 11km in 48’.

Viernes, 16 de Marzo, 2018 – Sparknotes: 2x 6x200m @ 31.1 avg w/ 50-55 sec jog (2’ between sets).

8:45am: Light speed session this morning – solo, as it’s Friday and the group worked out yesterday. Jogged down to the stadium and luckily had my phone as the guard didn’t want to let me in but called Profe Franklin and 30 seconds later I was waved through. Nice.

Warmed up easy around the track 5km+ in 23’ and then did drills and a few strides in tracers.

Workout was 2 sets of 6x200m (12 total) with the last one in each set a bit quicker. Rest was short (~1’ but ended up being 50-55 seconds) to keep things under control.

Ended up running 31.4-5 on an awful lot of these, so I guess that’s my ideal cruising without straining pace. The rest actually felt fine and the 2’ between sets felt ample. Amazing how much different this feels than some of the earlier workouts. Both of the quicker reps #6 and #12 were 29.7 which felt harder but not like crazy straining.

Overall avg was 31.1 which is brought down a bit by the two quicker reps. The other 10 were all very consistent right around 31.4.

Cooled down 5km to get in a bit more mileage for the morning since the legs felt fine. A good session that won’t leave me too tired but definitely got the legs moving.

Total run 16km in 70’.

(0’31.5)
(0’53.7)
(0’31.4)
(0’52.7)
(0’30.5)
(0’53.6)
(0’31.4)
(0’54.4)
(0’31.1)
(0’50.9)
(0’29.7)
(1’59.5)
(0’31.4)
(0’51.9)
(0’31.4)
(0’55.6)
(0’31.4)
(0’54.9)
(0’31.3)
(0’53.0)
(0’32.2)
(0’52.7)
(0’29.7)

4:30pm: Ran very easy w/ Brittany down to the park and 2 big laps to the track. Very nice and holding back to run together which was good w/ the speed this morning and a big one on Sunday. Felt good and finished with 4x strides on the track and then home quicker. Total run 11km in 50’.

Sabado, 17 de Marzo, 2018 – 9:40am: Left really late as I slept a bit late and then couldn’t find my headphones for like an hour (and still haven’t). Ran through the park up to Bicentenario. A bit cloudy but felt pretty decent. Big loop up there and then back to la carolina. Stopped at the track and did 6x strides and 200m in 32. Jogged back to Portugal and walked up the big hill. Total run 18km++ in 1h17.

XT: toes.

4:30pm: Clockwork double around the park. Felt quite good for some reason and ran much quicker out the door – 15’30 first big lap and then 9km to the park in 38’. Stopped and did 4x strides and then easy home. Total run 11km in 46’.

XT: toes.

Domingo, 18 de Marzo, 2018 – Sparknotes: 30km in 1’44’10 (3’28.3/km) w/ 15x1600m @ 5’11.4 (3’14.6/km) w/ 400m jog @ 1’49.2 (4’33/km) – on TM in Quito.

9am: Long workout today on the treadmill. This was a continuation of a series of workouts I did starting w/ 2 weeks ago doing 20x1K (400m jog) and today building that up to 15x1600m. The total volume was the same, but 60% longer reps and thus a higher percentage of the total run at goal race pace.

Doing these long fartleks on the treadmill at the suggestions of prof Franklin. We talked a bit about HR and how it appear much lower and he recommended Treadmill as a way to get the HR higher, especially on a solo effort. My understanding is that because there’s no convective cooling from moving through the air, you create a warm air-layer around your body which causes the HR to get much higher than it would if you were outside running through the air.

Short marathon warmup 2km, drills, a few strides, 3km total.

Took Gel #0 right after the warmup.

This workout felt much harder than the 1Ks two weeks ago. Not sure if it’s just that I’ve got more miles in my legs right now or if it’s just the fact that the reps were 60% longer, but it just felt much harder. Really from rep 3 onward, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to finish. This was thus a very good mental practice of not feeling good and just sticking with it one step at a time. I tried to just focus on the rep I was in, the set (I’d split it in my mind into 4 sets of 4). This seemed to work well and though this one never really felt comfortable, the compartmentalization worked very well.

The last 3 felt very tough. The last rep I ran as a 2K instead of 1600m as that would take us up to 30k. Unfortunately the machine stopped randomly right in the middle of that last rep (I think because it hit 100 minutes) and so I had maybe 10-20 seconds where I had to stop. Still, managed to push through and close the last 1km a tiny bit quicker.

Overall, this was definitely one of the hardest workouts I’ve done. It actually felt harder than the marathon last weekend. I think I’m still recovering a bit from last week being really busy and the big jump back up to higher mileage for this last block. Still, very glad I got it done and stuck with it and didn’t bail after like 3-4 reps.

Cooled down easy 2km.

Total run 35km.

Splits – NB – all 1600 reps were set at 18.5 KPH which is 5’11.4. Variation is due to me screwing up the timing on my watch.

Gel #0
1.60 km 5’09.5 (5’09.5) 145
2.00 km 6’55.5 (1’46.0) 138
3.60 km 12’05.7 (5’10.2) 158
4.00 km 13’54.0 (1’48.3) 149
5.60 km 19’01.9 (5’07.9) 162
6.00 km 20’50.2 (1’48.3) 152
7.60 km 26’01.1 (5’10.9) 162
8.00 km 27’46.2 (1’45.1) 154
9.60 km 32’59.8 (5’13.6) 164
10.00 km 34’42.2 (1’42.4) 156 – Gel #1
11.60 km 39’52.2 (5’10.0) 165
12.00 km 41’39.4 (1’47.2) 155
13.60 km 46’50.5 (5’11.1) 165
14.00 km 48’36.6 (1’46.1) 156
15.60 km 53’47.1 (5’10.5) 165
16.00 km 55’36.1 (1’49.0) 156
17.60 km 1’00’45.4 (5’09.3) 166
18.00 km 1’02’35.5 (1’50.1) 157
19.60 km 1’07’43.5 (5’08.0) 166
20.00 km 1’09’34.5 (1’51.0) 157 – Gel #2
21.60 km 1’14’43.7 (5’09.2) 166
22.00 km 1’16’34.0 (1’50.3) 159
23.60 km 1’21’42.4 (5’08.4) 168
24.00 km 1’23’46.3 (2’03.9) 156
25.60 km 1’28’56.9 (5’10.6) 167
26.00 km 1’30’42.5 (1’45.6) 160
27.60 km 1’35’50.6 (5’08.1) 169
28.00 km 1’37’46.4 (1’55.8) 159
29.00 km 1’41’00.8 (3’14.4) 163
30.00 km 1’44’10.3 (3’09.5) 170

5pm: Very easy shakeout around the park. Pretty tired from this morning but good shakeout and mileage. Finished at the track and managed to get in 4x strides even though it was super crowded as it’s sunday PM. Total run 11km+ in 52’.