Training Log Entry 11: August 7 - August 13, 2023
After the past few weeks of steadily increasing my mileage, I’ve decided to make this a down week. In 2022, I started scheduling my training in 6-week blocks, where every sixth week I would have a down week with much lower mileage and either one or no workouts. Since I’ve been injured for most of 2023, I haven’t been able to stick to this schedule. But considering my current volume, it felt like the right time to use this week for recovery and them get back on this schedule starting next week.
Monday August 7
Off
Tuesday August 8
This session was like last Tuesday’s run and similarly well. I felt nice and relaxed, while maintaining an honest pace the entire time. I did take a couple of short breaks to ensure that the effort level stayed low. The total distance ended up being 8.5km.
Wednesday August 9
The plan for the day was to do my one workout of this down week. This workout was going to be 6x(2’ on, 2’ float) at a much more controlled effort. However, after finishing my warm-up and do some stretching, my left calf and hamstring were really bothering. As a result, I decided to postpone the workout.
Instead, I turned this session into an easy run. Due to my leg, the pace came down quite a lot. But worst of all, I had a pretty bad breathing spasm towards the end. This really took a lot out of me, and even after resting for a while, I struggled to complete the rest of the run,
Ultimately, I did manage to finish the run, which totaled to 8.7km. I might try to do this workout again later in the week, or I might just skip it altogether depending on how my body feelings.
Thursday August 10
Once again, I did another easy day at the MARC this week. I stuck entirely to the trails for this run, given that the mileage this week isn’t my primary concern.
All in all, I didn’t feel great during this run. I had really low energy from the start of the run, which made the uphills particularly sluggish. Although my leg was feeling slightly better than the previous day, running on uneven terrain was probably not wisest choice. Nevertheless, I finished this run with 7.3km and 170m of elevation gain.
At the beginning of this week, my plan was not to drop the mileage significantly and still hit around 60km. However, after these past few days, I’ve decided to shift gears and take it really easy for the remainder of the week, without thinking about mileage.
Friday August 11
I started this run not feeling very good. My legs felt heavy and in the first 2km I had to stop a couple of time. However after that, I started to feel a lot better and finished the rest of the run relatively smoothly. My left calf/hamstring still still wasn’t feeling that great, so the overall pace was fairly slow. In the end, I did 9.1km for the day.
Saturday August 12
My calf didn’t feel great when I woke up, so I decided not to run on this day. Instead, I ended up going for a swim at a lake. I’ve been interested in adding some swimming into my training, primarily to help improve by breathing. I probably only swam for about 20 minutes, but it turned out to be far more tiring than I anticipated.
Sunday August 13
For this week’s long run, I only planned to do 12km very easy.
All in all, the run didn’t go very well. Over the past week, I’ve been having some breathing problems due to allergies, and during this run, I could really feel their impact. By the time I reached the halfway point, I was already feeling aerobically tired.
After taking a fairly long break, I starting my way back at a slower pace. During the second half, my left leg started to bother me quite a bit which caused me to slow down quite significantly. Luckily, my leg wasn’t hurting enough for me to consider stopping altogether. I even picked up the pace for the last 2km and that didn’t make it feel any worse.
With this run, I finished my down week with 45.4km and 350m of elevation gain over 5 days.