Training Log Entry 14: August 28 - September 3, 2023

Monday August 28

Off

Tuesday August 29

This was my first run back after taking the last week off due to an ankle sprain. My goal was to take the run very slow and be extra careful about foot strike to avoid irritating my ankle.

During the run, my legs felt really good, but as I expected, my breathing wasn’t great. I had a breathing spasm fairly early into the run and had to take a few breaks to catch my breath. Fortunately, my ankle felt pretty good and was only slightly sore.

The run ended up totaling 8km.

Wednesday August 30

I wanted to do a bit more than just an easy run this day, so I decided to do a mini fartlet consisting of 5 sets of 2 minutes steady and 8 minutes easy. There was no specific pace for the fast segments, I simply focused on picking up my cadence and keeping it controlled.

This workout ended up feeling pretty good. I never felt like I was pushing too hard during the fast reps, but my stride did feel a bit clunky. The paces for them were all over the place, splitting 4:36/km, 4:26/km, 4:44/km, 4:51/km and 4:20/km. My breathing was much better compared to the previous day, but I did still take a couple of breaks.

The total volume for the session was 10.5km.

Thursday August 31

I did an easy 8.5km on this day and was feeling pretty good during this run. I was feeling really comfortable and my pace ended up being faster than I was expecting. I took the steep hill easy, as I usually do, and had a couple of extra breaks, but my aerobic strength was definitely getting back to where it was before the injury.

Friday September 1

For this Friday session, I did a long hill workout at the MARC. I was a little hesitant to do this workout, because of the risk of rolling my ankle again, but I really wanted to do this workout so I went ahead with it anyways.

I did 5 hill reps for the workout, and it ended up going surprisingly well. I was able to get into a comfortable pace during the uphills, and was recovering really well on the downhills.

The only hiccup occurred when I experienced a minor breathing spasm near the end of the 2nd rep. However, I took a short rest after the rep, and didn’t have any breathing issues for the rest of the workout.

Had it not been for that breathing problem, I was almost certain I could have completed 3 consecutive loops without any breaks, which would have a first. I ended up taking recovery breaks after the 2nd and 4th reps, which was still an improvement over previous workouts where I typically end up taking breaks after almost every rep.

Each rep was also progressively faster as the workout went on, and during the last two reps, I even managed to kick during the final stretch of the hill.

In total, including the warm-up and cool-down, the session covered 11.3km with 260m of elevation gain.

Saturday September 2

I didn’t feel great during this run. My shoulders were really stiff, and they never really loosened up throughout the run. This made it difficult to relax, but I still got 5km in for the day.

Sunday September 3

I didn’t want the mileage for this week to be too high, considering I took the prior week off, so I only did a shorter long run.

Overall, the run went fairly well, but my pacing was all over the place. I did a good job keeping it relaxed for the first 5km until I reached the steep hills. However, after partially walking the hills, I started to increase my pace a bit too much. While I did feel pretty good, I knew I was pushing it a bit too much, so I stopped for a minute to pull myself back.

When I started back up, I did manage to keep the next kilometer easy, but I ended up pushing the pace again after that. This time, though, I was able to maintain it until the end, considering that the run wasn’t very long.

The run ending up being 14.1km, which brought my total mileage for the week to 57.5km with 550m of elevation gain.