week of training

Funny: back when I thought Big Sur might happen on its rescheduled November date, I sought a running coach to perhaps guide me through the nuances of marathon training. She was, in short, very doubtful of my training regimen: I wouldn’t be able to bike hardly ever, couldn’t fit swims in, had to limit strength training, and wouldn’t crest 45 miles in a week. No doubt, marathon training IS demanding, but my continual athletic health so far since approaching my training with a triathlon state of mind sort of cuts her doubts out of the picture. I hit 51 miles on the road and 91 on the bike this week, and I feel about as much fatigue as if I only ran 35 miles over a seven-day span. A couple days into the week following this, I felt fatigue and had to pay close attention to my body’s signals in order to keep efforts easy enough to encourage recovery. Otherwise, however, I’m feeling great with nothing more than a bit of muscle soreness hanging around from my strength workouts.

Monday, 6/29: 6.33 miles, 10:26 pace + 45 minute strength + 2,000 yard swim (41:44)

Up early and ground out a triage of sessions back-to-back-to-back. Very soggy 10k and change but my body easily found its groove and I settled into a satisfyingly low effort pace. Tackled legs and core in my home office gym, then slipped into the swimgear and plugged out 1,800 yards straight in 37 minutes with a 200 yard easy cooldown to wrap up the day’s training!

Strength: Each exercise 3x through

• 10 sumo deadlifts/20 banded lateral leg lifts
• 10 lunges with lift/20 banded hip flexions
• 10 SL deadlifts
• 10 SL bridge
• 10 back extensions/10 yogi squats
• 10 swings/10 SL calf raises
• 10 elevated side plank leg raises, per side
• 2 minute bird dog burnout

Tuesday, 6/30: 40.47 miles, 15.7 mph cycling (2:35:00) + 3.12 miles, 8:28 pace brick run

Plan going into the training day: bike, jump off bike to preheat oven and pull batch of homemade cinnamon buns from fridge, run a 5k tempo run, jump back inside to bake said cinnamon rolls. Worked like a dream! Cinnamon buns are a culinary sin of mine, so I don’t usually have them around (not to mention they’re a royal pain to create), but quarantine, a simple-sounding recipe, and a big craving set me into a spiral of desire. I’m so glad I went with my gut – my gut, also, is happy I did, too.

I am quite impressed with my progress on Pittor. 15.7 used to be a shock when I’d reach it as an average during quality sessions. Now, I’m flinging out 16 mph with ease, but usually over a mere 20 miles. I think I paced myself quite well in this ride and mixed it up with 15 miles of steady climbs, never leaving a zone 3 effort. I fueled beforehand with my trusty Nuun Prime and a GU Wild Berries Stroopwafel, and brought along a big bottle of water and my favorite Clif Caramel Macchiato energy bar just in case I needed a pickup. I took half the bar around 90 minutes, and wound up eating the rest later as a snack.

Wednesday, 7/1: 10.08 miles, 10:20 pace + 1,800 yard swim (36:45) + 10.8 miles, 16 mph cycling (40:32)

Had a neurotic moment when I noticed the pattern of 10s and 8s in my duo of morning workouts, so I spontaneously tacked on a short ride to complete the trio. Very satisfying to view in the Garmin app. I think I might keep this aerobic midweek longrun, since the distance and lack of structure has felt really pleasant over the past two weeks. Speedwork hasn’t much appealed to me in this heat, even though I know ~summer suffering builds fall PRs~. Well, who knows if there’s PRs to be had in the fall, anyway, so might as well enjoy the process rather than force it!

Swim was a fun little fartlek workout: 400 warmup, 2 x 100 with 100 steady between, 2 x 75 with 75 steady, 4 x 50 with 50 steady, and 4 x 25 with 25 steady before a short 100 yard cooldown. Muy bueno.

Thursday, 7/2: 20 miles, 16 mph cycling (75 minutes) + 1 hour strength + 6.48 miles, 9:16 pace

I LOVE double training days, they certainly break up the hours very nicely. I wasn’t so enthused when I got up this morning around 4:30 but hit a rhythm really easily during the spin intervals. I don’t do focused power work much but this workout was just enough to get my legs mad at me. I warmed up for 20 minutes with 3 x :90 high cadence bursts, then hit 5 x 2 minutes at a hard effort (17.3-17.5 mph averages), spun easy for 10 minutes, and capped it off with 5 x :30 hill surges with :90 recoveries and a cooldown to reach 20 miles.

After breakfast and a break to make hummus and relax, I visited the apartment gym for a treadmill progression. I can’t stomach midday runs anymore – I’ll gladly suffer through intense morning humidity and still-intense pre-sunrise heat but don’t exactly want to die outside – so anytime I have a workout planned for later in the morning, I’ll head indoors. I set the incline to .5% and cruised through a satisfying progression run. My splits were 10:16, 9:52, 9:26, 9:09, 8:46, 8:14, and 1:41 for the final .21 of the 10k (about a 7:4x pace) and cooled down to hit one hour. SO much fun and my legs really responded.

Strength: each exercise 3x through

• 12 single-arm clean and press
• 8 single-leg wall sit biceps curls per side
• 10 dumbbell step-ups
• 12 side lunge to knee raise
• 15 bench dips
• 10 bench press
• 10 front raises
• 10 pistol squat to leg extension
• 12 pulley rows
• 16 plank dumbbell drags
• 20 plank alternating lateral leg lifts/20 alt knee to elbow
• 30 hip swivels
• 20 jump lunges (just one set, to reach an hour)

Friday, 7/3: 17.08 miles, 10:35 pace

I don’t know if the pasta I ate the night before set the stage for this run or what, but I didn’t anticipate a 17 miler much less a comfortable 17 miler! Weather didn’t yield from the previous days, it was 82 with a 90 real feel by the time I started, but the addition of a breeze I think contributed to my quickly-realized and continuous groove. I kept my heart rate stable until the sun rose, when it quickens naturally due to increased heat, and decided last minute to add a loop to ensure I hit 17. This is the longest training run I’ve ever done, and I finished with pretty peppy legs considering!

Before: Nuun Prime in Orange (read my review here!) + GU Salty’s Caramel Stroopwafel

During: ~ 60 oz water, tablet Nuun + Caffeine in Ginger Lemonade, 1 Maurten Gel100 (no caffeine)

Saturday, 7/4: 20.39 miles, 16 mph cycling (1:16:29) + 2,500 yard endurance swim (52:44)

Only homage I paid to the 4th of July was riding 4 x 4 minute hills on Pittor – and grilling some halibut in our driveway. Otherwise, we had a pretty quiet day of mostly home time except a short outing to pick up a grocery order and drive around the Causeway to escape the indoors for a bit. After my morning trainer tour I climbed into the cement pond for an aerobic swim consisting of 800 yards easy, 3 x 400 yards faster (8:16, 8:15, and 8:15), 400 yards easy, and a 100 yard cooldown to reach 2,500. Pretty proud of knocking out 2,400 essentially continuous, minus a couple quick stops to adjust my goggles.

Sunday, 7/5: 4.38 miles, 10:34 pace + 1 hour strength + 3.57 miles, 9:49 pace

Thunder forced me to split my run between the great outdoors and the great indoors, so I threw in a progression during run #2 to keep my mind fresh. The miles felt more challenging than warranted and some fatigue I’d imagine from Friday kicked in during and after. I was quite useless most of the day.

I’ve been trying to work mostly on posterior chain exercises during my gym sessions and so far I’ve felt the aftermath in all the right places: glutes, hamstrings, upper back, even in the obliques a bit. Weaknesses, be gone!

Strength:

1. 5 rounds of each superset, 6 reps each (12 if unilateral movements)

• Curtsy lunge/bench step-up
• Bosu goblet squat/pushup with side plank arm raises
• Standing oblique crunch/deadlift

2. 3 rounds of each superset, 10 reps each

• Pulley row/pistol squat
• Front squat/single leg hop
• Donkey kicks/side plank hip dips

• 3 x 30 X toe taps/30 cross mountain climbers

Total running mileage: 51.04

Total cycling mileage: 91.66

Total swimming yardage: 6,300