Traveling out of town to visit family is great. It’s truly a blessing to be able to spend time with them, catch up, create new memories, etc. At the same time, traveling can really mess with your sleep schedule. That’s where I am right now. Enjoying everything, while trying to make the best of inadequate sleep. Time to get moving!
Day 1
This is our last day in Amarillo. Last night was my second night of this weekend with less than 5 hours of sleep. But I’m feeling pretty good this morning. Today’s workout is 50 minutes of easy running at the track.
All done. OK, this isn’t bad. Garmin shows an average pace of 10:15/mile and an average heart rate of 138. Legs are feeling good afterward, so I’ll run a few strides. Great workout!
Today is my younger daughter Gracie’s 15th birthday. Seriously, where does the time go? Gracie is our child who is both artistic and athletic. She has a beautiful singing voice and is also on the drill team at school. She’s the one who is the most likely to run or go to the gym with me. My parents always warned me about how quickly the time would fly. While I believed them, I wasn’t expecting this.
To celebrate, we took her to breakfast and grabbed some coffee. After we got back to my in-laws’ house, it all hit. I could hardly keep my eyes open. While they were running some errands, I managed to get a pretty good nap. Then we had lunch, which consisted of two fast food burritos. On the drive home, I polished off two more burritos, totaling six for the weekend. That was officially too much. I felt awful for the rest of the way home. It’s definitely time for some healthier food.
Day 2
OK, I’m feeling every bit of this weekend. Lack of sleep, bad eating, etc. I can hardly drag myself out of bed this morning. I’m already trying to plan my next nap. Maybe lunch break today? Let’s get this over with.
Running at the community college trail again. 3 marathon paced miles with 3 minutes of easy recovery in between, plus warmup. Here we go!
Great warmup. I was able to run the warmup mile at 9:27 with an average heart rate of 131. This is faster than usual for such an easy effort. Feeling great! Bring on the real workout!!
Mile 1 was easy. 8:31 pace (goal of 8:33-8:45). I actually felt like I was holding back. Mile 2 was also easy. Same exact pace and barely trying. Woo hoo!! What a day! If this is what a marathon feels like, I’m ready! Uh oh…I may have spoken too soon. Somewhere into mile 3, I felt like my body was saying “if I’m going to do this, you’re going to have to give me some better fuel and more sleep.”
I ended up looking at my watch more than usual to stay on pace, and finished the last mile at 8:34. Honestly, I could have kept going at this pace for a little while. But I felt like I pushed too hard for feeling as run down as I did. It felt like a threshold run or harder, which was not what I needed. Looking back, I should have stuck with running by perceived effort. This served me much better last week. Dang it! But I guess it’s not a loss if you learn something from it.
Day 3
7+ hours of sleep last night, but I’m still feeling tired today. Why does it take so long to recover from a lack of sleep? Garmin shows my average sleep for the past week to be 6 hours and 18 minutes. I think I’ve figured this out. If I can average 8 hours of sleep, I feel great. With 7 hours, I feel like I’m at least maintaining. But when it’s 6 or less, I feel like I’m progressively falling behind. I’m really hoping for an early bedtime tonight.
Pretty simple this morning. Easy walk around the neighborhood with a few jogging intervals. Legs are feeling good.
Day 4
Feeling much better today. Less than 7 hours of sleep last night, but yesterday’s nap really helped. After Tuesday’s (day 2) workout, I want to get this right. In addition to paying closer attention to effort, I’m setting a high heart rate alert just to make sure I don’t push too hard.
Today’s workout consists of a warmup followed by 1 mile easy, 3 miles at marathon pace, and another easy mile. After each marathon pace mile, there is a 3 minute recovery (easy run/walk) period.
Alright, that was much better. The effort felt slightly harder than my easy “all day” effort, but still easier than my tempo / threshold effort. It never felt like I was straining and there were no high heart rate alerts. Pace was a little slower than I originally thought. 8:47, 8:54, and 8:54.
I’ve noticed that starting a workout at marathon pace effort has me running closer to 8:30/mile, while using the same effort after running a few easy miles has me running 15-25 seconds per mile slower. So maybe my feasible marathon pace is closer to 8:45-8:55 at this point. That’s fine. I’d rather dial things back a bit and speed up as my fitness improves, rather than pushing too hard at a pace that’s not realistically sustainable.
It’s about lunch time and really nice outside, so I think I’ll go take a walk.
All done. Beautiful day! Around 80 degrees, but with a cool breeze. In the shade, it was nearly perfect. A little steamy out in the sun because of recent (yesterday) rain. I managed to cover 3.9 miles, which makes a total of 11.05 for the day. No more physical activities planned until Saturday.
Day 5
Rest day. Some foam rolling and that’s about it.
Day 6
Almost 8 hours of sleep last night. Feeling great! I think I might actually be caught up from last weekend. Today’s working consists of 7-8 hills at 10k pace for warmup, followed by 7.5 miles. I’m doing the hills in our neighborhood and the regular running at the Cotton Belt Trail, which is only a couple of blocks away.
Today, I’m trying something new. I may have mentioned this before, but I’m a heavy salt sweater. Anytime I work up a really heavy sweat for more than about 30 minutes, I end up with a terrible headache and feel like sleeping for the rest of the day. I’m trying SaltStick Caps to see if they help. The reviews were good, so I’m crossing my fingers. 🙂
Hills feel great. It’s a temptation to sprint these, so you have to learn to back off. The pace should be fairly fast, but not all out. The objective is to help strengthen your legs and develop quicker turnover, not to use up all of your energy before the actual workout.
All done with hills, so let’s head to the trail. It really is a beautiful day so far. Temperature is in the lower 70’s, which feels really nice. This also means I’ll need to slow down the pace just a bit.
Great run. I ran by perceived effort, hoping to keep my heart rate in zone 1, which for me is 125-141. It turns out that I was successful for most of the workout. However, as the sun came up and temperatures increased, it started to feel really humid. For the last couple of miles, I was having trouble cooling down, so my heart rate increased a little. Even still, my average heart rate was 133 with an average pace of 11:13/mile.
The good thing about a lower heart rate run like this is that you don’t feel nearly as run down afterward. The SaltStick Caps seem to be working as I sweated a ton but didn’t have a headache afterward.
Something to take note of. I filled a 1.5 liter reservoir with water and also brought a small water bottle. Before I made it back to the house, it was all gone. This does concern me a bit as the long runs will be getting considerably longer and the weather will be getting hotter. While it may be possible to carry a little more water, I’m not sure if it will be enough. So I need to figure something out. If you have any suggestions, I’m open.
Day 7
I did my recovery walk with jog intervals at the track this morning. It was at 5:30AM and there was actually another couple there jogging. There’s not usually much company at that time of day. Church this morning and no other physical activities planned.
Final Thoughts
There has been steady improvement each week. As far as the easy runs are concerned, I think I’d be OK not looking at the heart rate monitor at all. With marathon pace, it’s becoming more familiar, but I think I still need the occasional reminders to back off when I’m pushing too hard. All in all, it’s been a great week. Three weeks down and only 23 to go!
Alan's First Marathon 