May(be)?

 

TL;DR

I'm much happier than
I look here.  lol.
That's me trying to smile
through the coordination
needed to selfie us in
public while standing.
  • Note the publish date, better late than never?
  • The beginning of the end
  • Chicago2Boston "Training Plan"

What Happened?

May vs April 😢

Can we just skip this part and move on?

  • Amount of time training is down 22% (11:22 to 8:51 per week)
    • Training volume is about half of what it should be by now.
  • Average weekly run mileage has regressed from 28 to 16 miles 🚨
    • I'm still struggling to get my longer runs up, but did make it to 10 miles twice, just like April
  • Body Weight?  Who knows.
  • Let's start off with happier things...

The Good News

The month of May felt like we emerged from a cocoon at the same time as our other butterfly friends, both new and old.  It was wonderful to break out of the bubble and connect with real live people.  The internet is awesome and all, but there really is nothing better than being able to connect in person with people, live in the flesh!  

(That picture to the left?  That's Nathan at 4 years old in one of my favorite pics of all time, I couldn't mention butterflies without including it.  We were releasing ones that the kids "raised" when our very own Disney Prince had a friend return to say a proper goodbye.  I can't believe that kid is now thriving in college!)

Ok, back to our original topic and shockingly enough it is even related to running!  We had the pleasure of an old friend, Shreve coming to visit us.  Shreve is one of the Boston Marathon peeps from the Runner's World forum days.  I've "known" him online for about 7 years now and this guy is epic!  We've only met a few times in person on race weekend, so it made me feel pretty special that he made the effort to reach out when he was going to be in upstate NY about an hour away for a few days.  It was great having the chance for Amanda to get to meet one of the Boston peeps in person that I've talked about so many times over the years.  This guy is a legend in our little corner of the internet and it was truly a joy to get out for a run around my 'hood with him while he was here.  Thanks Russ!  Ooops, I mean Shreve!

As the weather finally turned from cold and wet to warm and mostly dry, we also got a chance to get out in the woods to spend quality time with new birds of the same feather as us...folks that are ready to embrace adventure again in the real world.  Good times.

The Other News

Work blew up on me in May unexpectedly.  I don't want to get into the details here out of respect for my team, but let's just say that I wasn't surprised to work 7 days a week in April, that happens when there is a lot of change.  I didn't expect to still be working 7 days a week in May while my teammates struggled with more important things than work.  The result?  Everything in my life got triaged around what is the most important thing right now.  Work came first.  Family and reconnecting with friends in the real world came second.  Third?  A distant third was the hobbies that are the topic of this blog.  The result was that if I could do a long bike ride and then spend the rest of the day and night playing with friends, I did.  If there wasn't enough time for the even longer bike ride that I wanted?  Meh.  It's still early.  That whole Chicago2Boston thing doesn't happen until October.  The first 70.3 triathlon?  That isn't until mid-June, plenty of time for things to work out.  lol.

Training Plan Outline


Despite prioritizing life the way I did, there was still some progress.  I needed to get more structured about training by mid-May if I was going to run a fast marathon in September to lock up a 2022 Boston Marathon slot.  Fortunately, the Boston Athletic Association gave me a reprieve when they later announced that my 2019 Chicago Marathon time will still be recent enough to get me into the 2022 Boston Marathon.  Score!  This took a lot of pressure off, but I still liked the general structure I had come up with.  Now, there would be more time to be patient and let the cranky glute finish recovering since I wouldn't have to get into serious training quite as soon.

The general idea was to bring structure to what I accidentally discovered in 2019.  The discovery?  Good fitness of any sort helps me run fast as long as I can get to the start line healthy.  I'm still working on the healthy part (dumbass glute) but to help me get there the idea was for Monday to be a light training day, then the rest of the week would have me bike or run in the morning with yoga or strength training in the evening.  Essentially, spend the morning trying to build the fitness for Chicago2Boston and take the evening to improve my health with mobility and strength work.  It would continue to be a weekend warrior plan where I would eventually build up to 5-6 hour bike rides on Saturday followed by 2-3 hour runs on Sunday in the months ahead.

The rides were dominated by indoor training because even though the weather turned nice during the day, it seemed like every morning was still cold and raining.  If I was still bike commuting, instead of working from home, I would have toughed it out.  But now that my commute to work is a walk up an extra set of stairs, I guess I'm getting soft.  The entertainment for those rides?  YouTube where I got to discover that Spartan Races are really well produced TV.  The commentary?  Good.  The camera work where they mostly just chase the athletes around and let the race be the story?  Fantastic.  Hey, Ironman triathlon people can you please watch some Spartan Race videos please?  You could learn a lot.  Really.

The runs were rough.  I did learn how to run slow.  I know it sounds strange, but I'm really proud of having 9:xx show up for my average pace on some of these runs.  It is nice to break free of an ego that always had to have an 8 (or 7 or 6 or 5) for the minutes part of the minutes per mile pace.  I think the slower, smaller strides did help my glute to feel better, but I still continued to struggle around the 8 mile mark with tightness and early signs of lopsided running, so with that in mind I tried to "Stay Humble, Be Healthy" by ending runs at the 10 mile mark before I had actual pain.  Must.  Stay.  Patient.  Dammit.

Yoga continued to happen regularly, although maybe not as often as I would have liked.  My wonderful wife was always very accommodating to join me whenever work ended for the day even though the timing was difficult to predict.  Some days I just didn't have the oomph left, but most days we made it happen.  Thanks for the support Amanda!

Strength training had to evolve.  I am no longer mixing up the set/rep counts.  I'm also no longer trying to lift my heaviest weights.  I've picked weights that in the past might have been part of my warmup and I'm sticking with them until this training cycle ends.  If my body is going to finish healing and be ready to do the challenge of Chicago2Boston then I need to be patient.  Yeah, it isn't a sexy theme, but it is an honest one.  It isn't in my nature to be patient (or humble) but I'm still trying to be better.

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