Am I running in Denver? Am I scoring on an airplane? NO! I sometimes don't know how many miles my legs can take in a day or in a week, and I learned a pretty valuable lesson a month or so ago.
I tend to think I'm pretty smart sometimes with running, and as you might expect, usually running will put me back in check. The week I decided to run 35 miles instead of my normal 25 miles is a great example of this. I'm training now for three distances at the same time, the 5 and 10k, along with a 1/2 marathon, so what I'm really trying to do is get my average mile times down over the course of every distance I run, plus hammering out solid track workouts and tempo runs. No real specific training other than that, I wanted to see how a high mileage week would affect me.
I didn't talk to my running group folks for advice this time and decided I was going to try a high mileage week. I see people in my Twitter feed running higher mileage and they range in age from much younger to much older than me (apparently I mentally blocked trying to also account for fitness level). I was aiming for 5 miles a day to get to my 35, which seemed reasonable, 5 miles isn't really much right?
Turns out you should increase incrementally by about 5 miles a week, not 10 miles. Now I know thanks to both my running group and my body.
I started the week on Sunday, and by Tuesday's track workout, I had about 16 miles pounded into my feet. I was feeling great, if suffering a bit of fatigue in my legs. That was expected. I ran my 5 miles or so on Wednesday, definitely feeling every bit of the 20 plus miles I had put on my legs. Also, track workouts can be pretty tough. Thursday is a regular 5.5 mile, semi-hilly tempo run, I knew my legs were tired and it would be a challenge. What I did was a PR in that run (with great pacers), I think just below 37 minutes, and I was pretty exhausted. Legs were definitely tired and sore. It's pretty rare for my legs to be sore, having run somewhere around 145 straight days at the time, but they were both tired and sore for this run.
By the end of the week they were even more tired and sore, and I was done with the 35 mile week. I had actually run just short of 35, I think around 34 but I had learned a few things:
I learned a necessity to balance out challenging myself with understanding my fitness level and listening to my body.
On the other side of things, I learned that no matter what your body is telling you, you can mentally overcome physical exhaustion if you are up for the challenge, this makes sense too. Through my ignorance, I pretty much killed it on a run that I may otherwise have taken it easy on based on my workout plan.
I learned once again, the value of having smart people to run with, and that I should take advantage when I can. That's smart running!
During this run streak (now around 170 days) I have run with sinus problems, headache, sore muscles, sore joints, stomach cramps, hangovers, dehydration, mental fatigue, physical fatigue, and sore toes (yes, it's a problem!). After the high mileage week, when I'm thinking of my daily run, as well as what I am doing for the week, there is a lot more flexibility in what I'm choosing to do. This makes it easier to plan the run(s), and keeps me from being lazy or making excuses to run less or not as hard.
In the end, I confirmed that I still have a lot to learn, but running is a patient teacher that will never give up on me.
No comments:
Post a Comment