Week Recap (30 Mar 2008 - 5 Apr 2008) - 58 Miles

I was shooting for around 60 miles this week and ended up pretty close, running only on the first 6 days. I thought about going for a short run on Saturday but opted to go for a bike ride instead. It was probably a good idea to give my legs some recovery time especially after the crappy workout on Friday. I think I'm on the right track as far as getting back to decent mileage and hopefully my legs will be able to handle some faster stuff soon.

Saturday, April 5, 2008 [0M]

20M bike ride. Since I was already close to my goal mileage for the week I thought I would benefit more from taking a day off running and doing some biking instead. This was my first long ride with my new bike and I looked more like a biker this time since I also invested in some bike shorts. I bought some bike shoes as well but I need to replace my pedals before I can use them so I was once again riding with my running shoes. I headed up Ralston Ave to Canada Rd, continued all the way to Woodside Rd and looped back down El Camino. I pretty much sucked at going uphill and the climb up Ralston was rather brutal. I'm still trying to figure out which gear to use for different inclines so I was shifting a lot and probably wasting a lot of energy. Once I got to flat surfaces on Canada Rd I got into a good rhythm and put in a good effort. There were a lot of other bikers along Canada and naturally I got competitive and was mostly kept passing people. It felt a bit strange though, since I couldn't just blow by people like I do when I'm running but had to work to get by and then had to make sure I wouldn't slow down after I was ahead. It was entertaining, though, especially since I looked a lot more amateurish compared to everyone else. I find it a bit strange that everyone riding a road bike is dressed up like a professional cyclist whereas I rarely see anyone running in running shorts. after having invested quite a bit of money to get a nice bike you might as well get all the necessary gear. I'm sure I have a lot more to learn about biking.

Friday, April 4, 2008 [10M]

4M decreasing pace. 5:51, 5:47, 5:38, 5:38.

I came back home work this afternoon and headed out to Carlmont High School around 6PM. The track is right around 2 miles away from my place, which is perfect for the pre-workout warm-up. Once I got to the track and started getting ready for my workout I realized to my surprise that the track is only about 390m per lap. I only ran here once before and it was at night so I didn't realize that the track is short. I would estimate that the 5M tempo I ran was about 7-9 seconds slower than I thought per mile, which makes it far less impressive but still not a bad workout I guess. The plan today was to run another decreasing pace 5-miler, starting at 6:00 and dropping 15 seconds per mile. As a sidenote I'll mention that I asked the MIT guys last week why they call this workout the "Kenyan" but I didn't get any compelling arguments so I'll stick to my less creative but accurate name. To make up for the short track I ran the workout in lane 3, which was 402-403m per lap, so a second or two slower per 1600. I got out a bit too fast on the first one, coming through the first lap in 85. I slowed down a bit for the rest of the mile but I was still 1-2 seconds faster than goal pace on each lap. I didn't have to pick it up too much for the second mile and was almost right on. Going into the 3rd mile things started looking bad. Aerobically I wasn't working hard at all but my legs were feeling heavy. I didn't put the effort needed to increase the pace, expecting the transition to 5:30 pace to be easy. I was 3-4 seconds slow on the first lap, brought it down a bit for the next couple of laps but still slower than goal pace. By the end of the 3rd mile my legs were dead and couldn't move any faster. Coming through the half for the 4th mile in 2:50 I decided that adding a 5th mile wasn't worth it. I added a couple of laps around the track and ran a pretty slow cool-down to get back home. This definitely wasn't the workout I was expecting, I thought I would at least be able to get down to 5:15 somewhat easily but I couldn't even break 5:30. I want look into this too much, though, the first workout after coming back from an injury is always tough. Mentally I wasn't into it at all and even though I think I have the aerobic fitness, my legs still need some more miles before I can start running fast again.

Thursday, April 3, 2008 [10M]

Out and back to Bair Island. I left the office before 6 PM, which hasn't happened in a long time, with the exception of days I was going for physical therapy. This is one of my least frequent runs since the route to Bair Island is rather boring, pretty much 4 miles along 101. To make things even worse, Bair Island has been closed for a few months now, which takes away of the option of adding a few miles on soft surfaces. It is at least a break from the usual routes so I don't mind throwing it in every now and then. The run actually turned out to be a pretty good, I was in the mid 6:30s on the way out and cruising in the mid 6:20s on the way back.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008 [9M]

Foster City. I was out of Club O by 6:45 this afternoon, which seemed early since there's still so much daylight at that time. I was planning to go for 8 miles but once I crossed over to Foster City I realized that I didn't have a standard 8 mile route around there. I tried for a while to come up with a new route but eventually I decided to go for my standard 9 mile one. It felt like I was running a bit slow at first but I was probably faster than I thought since I averaged around 6:35-6:40 pace. I split 7:00 for one of the miles along the bay trail but that mile always seems to be about 10 seconds long and I was running into a strong headwind. I was down to 6:27 along Marina lagoon without a noticeable increase in effort so there probably wasn't too much variation in my pace. I ran some decent strides outside Club O afterwards and added some lifting. I mostly did a lower body workout, doing lunges, leg curls and calf raises. I skipped the bench and did one set of pull-ups but couldn't motivate myself to do any more. In unrelated news, I have to mention seeing a guy running with the full winter gear, pants, gloves, hat and a wind breaker. I don't even know how many layers he was wearing underneath but he seemed pretty buffed up. I could at least justify this during the winter, even though I made it through without having to wear anything more than shorts and a short sleeve T-shirt, but today was in the mid 50s and sunny so seeing someone with so much clothing was completely ridiculous.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008 [9M]

Hallmark Park. I opted to run from home this afternoon and I was out by 6:45 PM. It's definitely nice to have the option of getting a run on trails on a weekday. I made my way to Hallmark through Water Dog Lake Park, taking it easy on the way up Lake Rd. I didn't add any extra mileage in Hallmark park, beyond the standard route to Hallmark Dr, and just headed back going through Water Dog Lake again. Wound up home in 58:44, which might be a bit short but I think it can be rounded up.

Monday, March 31, 2008 [10M]

Redwood Shores. I wasn't very excited about getting back to work today after an almost 4 day long vacation. I called it a day by 6PM and headed out from Club O shortly after. Easy 10-miler without anything exciting to report.

Sunday, March 30, 2008 [10M]

Balboa Park. I was up around 9 this morning, somewhat more leisurely than the last couple of days. We were on the road back to San Francisco by 9:30, making a stop at Balboa park along the way to get the run out of the way. I ran with Rachel for most of the run, which kept me from running too fast. We were still running at a decent pace, more or less what I would be running on a casual Sunday. We started near the natural history museum and wandered near by at first without finding any good places to run. After a while we found some trails east of the park and spent some time there before heading back. I dropped Rachel off after 58 minutes and added on another couple of miles to make it 10. It turned out to be a rather enjoyable run overall, to a great extend thanks to having someone to run with. It was good thing we got the run out of the way so I didn't have to run after what turned out to be a really long trip.