Training Log Entry 3: June 12 - 18, 2023

This will be hopeful be the last week of a short 3 week transition back into my regular training schedule. After bringing back one workout last week, the goal for this week is to have two workouts, on Wednesday and Friday, and keep the mileage in the low 60s.

Monday June 12

Off

Tuesday June 13

This ended up being a terrible day for me. Legs felt heavy from the beginning, but I wasn’t too concerned. However, just 1k in, I had a bad breathing spasm. After walking for about 15-20 minutes, I managed to feel slightly better, but I still struggled to get much of anything going. I decided to stop at a bit over 5km.

After returning home, I rested for about 15 minutes before going out for another 3km. Although this run went better, my breathing was still problematic. Also, I starting to have some medial knee pain while running on pavement, which is concerning.

Wednesday June 14

I had scheduled to do a 5km threshold workout this day, but because my breathing still felt bad, I decided to do a vertical workout instead. I’ll go into more detail about this type of workout the next time I do it, but for this run, I could barely do anything.

From the start, taking deep breathes was difficult which made even the warm-up difficult to finish. After the first hill rep, my legs were already fried and I had to stop the workout there.

After these past two days, I decided to focus on recovering and take the rest of the week easy.

Thursday June 15

Off.

Friday June 16

I was planning on taking this day off again, but in the afternoon I got an urge to run. I was feel pretty good decided to do a short workout.

Since I wanted to pick up the pace, I decided to do a 10 minute threshold in the middle of run
Wore the Prime X’s for this which ended up causing some issues. The shoes irritated my right arch for most of the run, especially during the fast section where I had to stop for a few seconds about every 1km. With the rests, I did end up averaging 3:53/km during the threshold.

My breathing during the run felt better than earlier in the week but my knee and back were pretty sore afterwards.

Saturday June 17

Did a 6km easy run this day and was happy with the effort level. My knee was sore when I woke up, but it never bothered me during the run. I’ve been trying to focus on shortening my stride length during easy runs to lower the impact on my legs and help with my endurance.

Sunday June 18

Woke up this morning feeling pretty sore in both hamstrings and my left calf. For a moment, I considered taking the day off but ended up still doing the long run.

My plan was to keep it easy and do a loop starting from the trail-head at Glen Allan Drive. This route has become one of my favourites because it’s a loop course that mostly stays on the trails and has a bunch of different terrains (flat, sharp hills, gradual inclines, rocky, a bit of pavement).

I was very happy with how this run went. It has been awhile since I’ve done a long run at an effort level that I felt I could realistically sustain for quite a while.

Since I was taking it easy, I partially walked up these two back-to-back steep hills. Otherwise, I kept a steady pace the entire time. The picture below is of one of these hills.

My hamstrings never ended up being an issue, but my calf didn’t feel that great. No pain, but it felt unhappy.

Finished comfortably with 14.5km and 150m of climbing, but if my calf hadn’t been an issue, I realistically could’ve gone up to 20km.

This ended the pretty rough week at 39.3km.