Weekly Summary – 105 miles in 13 runs. A great long-tempo and I’m ready for the 50k next weekend! Lower mileage with a recovery block after basically a month of high volume. Pumped to head to Madison and race on Saturday!

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Lunes, 28 de Marzo, 2016 – 9am: Easy run on MVS out/back. Stopped at Sports Authority to pick up some Gels on the way back. Ethio cooldown. Total run 13M in 90’.

XT: Back/hips.

4pm: Easy shakeout around CC with a big one tomorrow. SUPER windy like 30MPH. Signs and trash cans getting blown over all around. Crazy. Finished with 5x strides (with the wind) which felt fantastic, naturally. Total run 6M.

XT: Hips.

Martes, 29 de Marzo, 2016 – Sparknotes: 36km (22.4M) in 2’03’02 (3’25/km, 5’30/M – 2’50’52 50km pace or 2’24’13 marathon pace). Felt great!

8:30am: Did this one as a basic dress rehearsal for Mad City with 9am start time. Had big dinner at 6pm, bed about 9pm, woke up around 6:30am. Hung around, had black coffee but NO breakfast (that was probably a mistake in retrospect, and I should force myself to eat a little something even if just for the tummy’s sake).

Began warm-up at 8:30am, jogged 2km from very easy to almost race pace by the end. Felt very good. Did drills a couple light strides and 200m in about 35 very relaxed. Started right at 9am.

Did the workout on a 7km loop that I’d constructed around CC to mimic the course a bit – i.e. a pretty significant hill from 6-7km (~130 ft in <1km) and then a steep downhill after. Weather was good – cool in the 50s and a bit windy, but relatively sheltered. I did 7km loops because I wanted each loop to feel like one “loop” at the race (though they’re 10km loops there, obviously) so I could think about where I was in the workout percentage-wise easily. Stashed a bottle at the start of each loop and carried gels with me (took one per 10km)

Pace at first felt very easy. I had done my math wrong and for some reason I had 3’30/km in my head as 3h00 50k pace (it’s actually 2h55 pace). So, I wanted to start around 3’30 and hopefully find a comfortable zone in the 3’20s and then if I felt good finish a bit quicker.

First time up the hill I was running more like 3’40 but then really used the downhill after to accelerate and really used that to up the turnover and get the wheels rolling a bit more. That first lap seemed to take a while, but after that I really got in a groove for the next 2-3 laps running like super metronomically, right around 3’25 for just about every km except the hill, where I was losing probably 8-10 seconds/km. At some point, I did feel my right hamstring (the one that bugged me after Shamrock) a bit, I think it was probably on hill climb #3 or so and shortly after. As I’ve noted before, it seems that steep hills are one of the things that bugged it, so I was ready to ditch if that got a lot worse. But somehow it seemed to recede after a few minutes and I don’t remember it bothering me much in the remainder of the run.

The split from 20-25km was faster but I think that’s just because it didn’t have a hill km in it if my math is right. I really only started to pick it up after 25km with 10k to go. This felt really good and I found just a bit more energy than I expected. At 28km, I began the last lap and was thinking – okay this is really how I want to feel with one lap to go. Because I definitely had plenty more. Even with the hill km, that last 5k was the fastest 5km of the day in 16’39 and I ran the last 1km probably in 3’0x (albeit with a big downhill as well).

I finished with 1km back home (didn’t stop) which I really jogged and still ran 3’33. If I’d run another 14km at 3’33 pace, that would have been a 2h54 today!

Super pleased with this one today and definitely ready to rock a big PR in 11 days. This is the same basic workout I did 10 days before Hartford where I solo’d a 2’19’36 marathon. I think I’m definitely in shape to run somewhere around 2h50-54 right now, even on a decently hilly course, so I think that running under 3h00 is very feasible barring some act-of-G-d type situation (e.g. weather or asthma or injury).

This leaves me very excited and very much ready for a nice little recovery block. This has basically been 30 days up with just a couple light pre-race or travel days sprinkled in, so my body is definitely ready to rest a bit and soak up all this good work.

Only negative reflection from this was that I got a wicked upset stomach shortly after I stopped running. I had no energy problems during the run (I took a whole 24 oz of powerade + 4 gels), but I think all the caffeine from the gels and coffee with no real food in my stomach was probably not a good idea. Not for future self – if you’re doing a workout with lots of caffeine involved (i.e. multiple gels + coffee), definitely have something pre-run just to settle the stomach.

Total run 38km, 24M-.

Splits
Unit Time Lap Pace
(Gel #0 at start)
5 km 17’26.0 (17’26.0) (3’29.2)
10 km 34’36.0 (17’10.0) (3’26.0) – Gel 1
15 km 51’46.0 (17’10.0) (3’26.0)
20 km 1’08’58.0 (17’12.0) (3’26.4) – Gel 2 – 1’12’40 at HM
25 km 1’25’56.0 (16’58.0) (3’23.6)
30 km 1’42’50.0 (16’54.0) (3’22.8) – Gel 3
35 km 1’59’29.0 (16’39.0) (3’19.8)
36 km 2’03’02.0 (3’33.0) (3’33.0)

5pm: Easy run around CC. Felt surprisingly decent after this morning. Hamstring didn’t bug me. Running under 4’20/km by the end… what!? Relaxed. Definitely not as beat up from this morning as from some big MP workouts. This bodes very well. Ethio cooldown. Total run 4km only.

Miercoles, 30 de Marzo, 2016 – 9am: Recovery block starting today. 3 days of very easy jogging after 30 days in a row of pretty constant high volume/intensity training (including a bunch at altitude). Ran CC loop. A bit sore from yesterday but better as the run progressed. Total run 8M in 60’.

XT: Back/hips.

PM: No run, just XT. Lots of walking because I got antsy.

XT: Core.

Jueves, 31 de Marzo, 2016 – AM: OFF – recovery block still. Taking two sessions off between runs. Did some core before late breakfast.

XT: Core

3:30pm: Super nice out today – over 70F and not as windy as the last few days. Ran easy – legs feeling good with 24+ hours of rest. Total run 9M in 60’.

XT: Back/hips

Viernes, 1 de Abril, 2016 – 9am: Easy run around CC loop. Felt good. Quite nice today and legs feeling great. Good start to April! Finished with 8x strides with jog back. Total run 10km, 6M++ in 39’.

XT: Back/hips

3pm: Super nice again this afternoon – sunny and in the 70s. Ran 2km easy in 8’ and then stopped and did drills and put on new cliftons to break them in a bit. Did 3km with 1km quicker, 500m easy. Trying to run 50k pace maybe 3’30/km and ran both under 3’20 (like 3’16 and 3’18) and felt like a jog. Felt very good – dangerously easy. Percieved effort is way off right now with some slightly fresher legs. Finished with ethio cooldown and XT and then jogged to costco for groceries and walked back. Total run 4M+.

XT: Hips

Sabado, 2 de Abril, 2016 – 9am: Planned to do a faster workout today (1,2,3,4,3,2,1km at ~HMP). Felt okay on first two intervals but about 1min into the 3rd rep, my same right hamstring started to really complain, so cut it short. Obviously not what I wanted a week out from a race and annoyed to be missing a faster session thinking further ahead, but what can you do.

Total run 10M.

5pm: Easy shakeout to test out the hammy. Felt pretty good but kept the pace easy as it seemed to be the faster, sustained running that bugged it. Total run 6M+.

XT: Core

Domingo, 3 de Abril, 2016 – 9am: Easy run on treadmill because I wanted to be able to bail if hammy was bad. Also super brutal out like 30MPH winds. Glad I wasn’t running cherry blossom today! Total run 10M in 70’.

XT: Back/hips

3pm: Easy shakeout around CC. Leg felt much better. Running quicker 3’50ish by the end. Total run 6M in 38’.

XT: Hips.