Monday- Before my run I had time for 45 minutes of weight training. Started with some band therapy for my shoulder and then moved onto weights for chest, back and shoulders. Worked easy to moderate with reps between 12 and 20. Want to work back again tomorrow and keep up on the therapy for the next month and see how my shoulder responds. Finished with 5 miin or so of abs with the bosu. This week I'm starting on some interval training, beginning with simple Fartlek intervals during my middle distance run. This week it's a 12 mile run and I'm startting from John street, going down to battery park and up the west side. The first 2.5 miles are a warm up for the 7 miles of intervals to follow. The intervals were fartlek intervals, no specific speed set, just 1 min hard followed by 4 minutes easy. Think I did 13 sets of this. At the 6 mile mark i stopped briefly to have a gel and turned around. The first half was a bit faster then the second. Found myself slowing quite a bit during the recovery for the last 3 intervals. My average HR for the whole run was 159 which was lower than I expected. The inverval speeds were for the most part between 7mm and 7:30mm. A bit slower than I had hoped. I have not done intervals in so long, I should not be surprised I was that slow. Just hope I will perform well for the 15k race this weekend where I need to run better than a 7:30 for the whole race. Overall was a very fast run for a 12mile training run. Average pace was 8:49 for the whole 12 miles, including warm up and cool down.
Tuesday- This is supposed to be an off day wut have time for weights and will swim in the evening. It was a good training session at John street. Stayed focused and got a lot accomplished. Moved between legs, chest and back. Did some combo exercises as well. Ended with front squat to OHP with 45# BB which i have not done in a real long time. Felt good. The chest work was light, Back moderate and legs moderate. Have worked up to 115# for the squats.
Today is my first swim at Roosevelt pool with the Tritons. I have not been in the pool for at least 5 weeks, not good, so was glad to hear that the schedule for this time of year is to focus on drills. Les did a lot of drills with us, some of which were new to me. We followed drills with a few 100yard swims. I focused on following through with my stroke and not flexing my wrist so much. Useful training, but not a workout. The pool was freezing but love the lockers and showers.
Wednesday- Today's plan is an easy run over the brooklyn bridge and back. Nice crisp day. About 32 degrees out. Need to remember that i don't need long underwear under my leggings unless it's well below freezing. Glutes and hamstrings are sore from yesterday's squats, lunges, dead lifts and leg extensions. Big surprise there. Otherwise the run was good. Average HR was 156 and pace including the warm up was 9:00. Hit the hill coming back fairly hard and worked HR up to 182.
About 6 hours after my run I did an indoor trainer workout. Was planning on doing this intensive interval session but changed my mind as I thought about doing weights tomorrow followed by a 18 mile run. Warmed up 10 min then did 15 minutes of short intervals at high cadence. 15s hard, 30s rest, 30s hard, 60s rest for 15 minutes. Heart rate for intervals got up to 177bpm which is well into zonce 5c. Then did free form. Went with my music and changed cadence and gears acccordingly holding a range a bit higher than race pace for most of the ride (158-169bpm). I did this for 20 minutes then cooled down for 5min. Was nice to do a bike set that was not so structured. 45 minutes total.
Thursday- I had planned on doing a good set of weight training in the morning before my run but my legs are not feeling recovered from the workout two days ago. I had an Isalean shake about half hour before the run, did about 10 minutes of abdominal work and then set out for my multi boro run. Warmed up 1 mile to the brooklyn bridge, crossed town on Chambers and ran up the hudson river park until I hit about the 4 mile mark. Felt good, and warmed up by 3 miles but it feels a lot colder out than it is. The wind throughout this run felt like it was against me the whole time. Temp was about 30 but wind was at 17mph. Headed back over the bridge and ran through downtown brooklyn and weaved my way to prospect park. Had a gel around 6 miles. Took the park loop clockwise, still feeling good, but HR seems a bit higher than it should be. At this point my average pace is about 9:20mm. Continuing clockwise, had another gel around 12 miles, stopped for a bathroom break and to refill water around 13 miles. I turned around at that point and as soon as I did my HR monitor want nuts. Said my HR was 197 and up to 202 when in reality it was probably about 155. That was crazy and it continued for the rest of the run, just random readings from time to time that were totally off. Around mile 15 my legs started to get a bit sore, felt like I was going faster than I was. Took the last hill out of the park hard, to finish off well and then it was pretty much down hill the rest of the way home. I cooled down for 1 mile, walked a bit before heading in and stretched for about 15 inutes. The main set of 16 miles was at 9:26 pace (goal was 9:36) and my Average HR was 160 (was probably actually 158 or 159 due to error in readings).
Friday- I had a break after clients to make some calls, I had an apple and then went down to the basement for a short run and weight training session. I'm supposed to do 6 miles today, but because the 15k race is tomorrow I want to do less. Have not been on a treadmill in months so thought that would be an easy way to get in both weights and run. Ran 3 miles at 2% incline. Again my HR monitor was indicating a higher HR at some points, but not out of control like yesterday. Average pace as 8:52 and AV HR 159. Did some foam rolling and good leg stretches.
After the run I ws not feeling like doing weights but got into it after about 10 minutes. Just focused on Back and shoulders. Over 30 minutes I did Lat PD wg, SA DB rows, Arnold shoulder press, DB lateral raises, Cable reverse fly kneeling, and DB should flexion, in that order. I threw in some incline pushups along the way as well being mindful of ROM. Went fairly heavy today compared to other workouts this week. Reps were 10-15 but really pushed to finish the last couple of reps on most exercises.
Good saturday Race Morning! Its the Ted Corbit 15k race today in Central Park. Slept well last night about 6.5 hours. Dinner night before was low in carbs and high in protein, red meat and fish. Had dessert before bed. Woke up feeling good. Had coffee and my typical oatmeal, yogurt, protein blend in the car on the way to pick up race number (about 1 1/2 hrs before race start). Thankfully david drove me to NYRR building to pick up my stuff. Jogged a bit (about 2 miles) and added some short pick ups. It's a cld morning in Central Park, 27 degrees ant 6mph winds. Supposed to get a big snow storm today. First mile or so was slow, wasn't placed in a good corral, but by mile 2 was feeling my pace and thought I would be able to maintain it. Ran counter clockwise, skipping Harlem hill and full circle of park. At mile 5 I had a gel and think I should have done this about 10 min earlier based upon how my body felt immediately after the gel. Second loop cut across 72nd street and after that there was really only one more big hill. I picked up the pace for the last 2 miles but looking at my average pace I was disappointed that I never caught up to the 7:25 pace I wanted to achieve. Based on my marathon goal of 8:00 i should be able to run a 15k at 7:25. Now Paris is flat and CP is a very challening course, so maybe i'm being to hard on myself, but disappointed that my av pace was 7:34. My HR was really high, and think that is part of the reason I had a hard time holding a faster pace. MY HR average was 180 and I maxed out on some of the hills at 189bpm. If i cut out the first mile of the race where my pace was averaging 8:14 because I had to work through the crowd, my av pace for the race would have been 7:32, not such a big deal as I thought. It was really the big hills that slowed me down. Wonder how I would have fared on a flatter course or a course I'm used to running. The official road runner results were time 1:12:06, pace 7:45, distance 9.3 miles. My Garmin said I ran 9.52 miles so I used that data as my analysis. I ran most of the race along the right side because it's less banked there and is easier to pass, but clearly this makes for a longer race than the official distance. For women 40-44 I placed 18 out of 156 which is the top 11.5%. For all women I placed 140 out of 1750 which put me at the top 8%, and overall I placed 662 out of 3467 which is top 19%. So overall I was really happy with the results. Only thing I would have done differently is run miles 2-4 a bit slower, have a gel between 3 and 4 (about 45 min in) and another at 6 to 7.
Sunday- First real snow of the year (about a foot) and I tried two new things, compression socks and yacktrax. Really slow going up to prospect park but the main drive had been plowed but not salted. The yacktrax were great and my legs feel fine even after the race yesterday. Noticed throughout later in the day that I have some isolated pain in my lower back on the right side. Turned around after 5 miles, was enjoying having warm water in my pack to sip on. Not terribly cold but the wind was pretty bad. Lots of people out sledding but only about 12 runners in the whole park and no cyclists (a first for the season). Felt sluggish by around the 6 mile mark and took it real slow for the rest of the way. Even in the park, which was 5.65 miles of my run I only ran at 9:25 mm and HR was a little high at 160. Totals were 10 miles, AV hr 160 ave pace 9:50mm. This was supposed to be a 6 mile run, but because I ran only 3 or my planned 6 on friday I felt OK with tagging on 3 miles. See my afterthought notes.