This was a hard month.
I always find the end of summer, moving into late July and August, difficult. It’s too hot to go out, which traps me in the house a lot, the grass starts to burn and brown, scorching the landscape, and the lack of regular daily routine starts to affect my mental state. All together, I begin to struggle to keep myself focused and on target with whatever it is that I am doing, a real contrast from the May and June months when I’m motivated, excited, focused, and on target.
It didn’t help that this month - after moderate June temperatures - the quickly rising temperatures and dew point slammed like a locomotive train into my training plan. Suddenly, the temperatures are in the 80s and 90s, and humidity is near 100%. Those are rough conditions to run in. Add in direct sun and it’s just brutal. These difficulties have surely added to some recent existential worries - the “why am I doing this?” voice has returned this month, and it has been tough to battle it through the heat.
In addition, this was a month of changes and adjustments, and one thing I’ve tried to do with running is to apply Daoist wisdom and just embrace the way life impacts your plan — particularly if the external events and changes are things you should embrace. According to the Daoist, it makes no sense to force or push the world in the attempt to make it fit your preconceived plans. All that will result from this, the Daoist says, is frustration and anxiety, as you selfishly try to force to world to meet your demands.
This Daoist wisdom was tested by two things this month. First, my 12-year old kid wanted me to help her run, which added three more 5k runs to my week. This impacts my recovery a lot, affecting performance. But kids come first - and she’s so proud! Second, I took a post-COVID trip to see family in Boston in Week 24 and ran an 18 miler through the city, wrecking my legs for the first week of this month. Smart? No. But I was in Boston, had to run it, and loved it - even if it shellacked my legs for days.
Basically, month seven has brought summer heat, mental struggles, adjustments, and a plateau in terms of pace advancement on Zone 2 runs. As I’ve seen in the past, this appears typical - my plan tends to show advances one month, and then it plateaus for a month, and this cycle rinse and repeats over and over again. After last month’s gains, I was scheduled for a plateau this month, and here I am in the midst of one. Let’s hope that’s all it is, because I’m running out of time to get to the pace I need by November.
Still, although my Zone 2 pace has not budged, my speed work — added a few weeks ago — has seen improvement. This has helped fuel my motivation, since I do see some success. In fact, my Garmin has even added my two solid VO2 max points this month, lifting me up from 51 to 53. At this point, all positives are welcome, as I feel like I’m limping into month eight with little optimism that I’ll make my target November time. It’s a good thing I’m a stubborn Italian, or I might throw in the towel.
Okay, so let’s take a walk through the data, and see where I am. I’ll list the overall table of data, and then look at each component of the plan separately, as I usually do.
First note: my last post covered month six, which in the table below is Weeks 21 - 24. For this month, I’ve decided to make it a five-week month, covering Weeks 25 - 29. The reason is that want to make sure that I have a month of speed work to talk about, and I had to drop speed work in Week 25 to recover from the Boston run.
Second note: the yellow rows dictate the data under them, until the next yellow row. So, from Weeks 21 - 23, I was running 90/10, or 90% Z2 runs and 10% speed work (the interval run). In Week 24 and 25, I could not do any interval sessions (one week weather related, the other due to killing my legs in Boston), so I had to run 100% Z2. Starting in Week 26 - 29, I moved to 80/20, adding a 5 mile tempo run day to the schedule as well as returning to intervals.
The Long Run
As you can see in the table and the chart, my long run pace — always in Zone 2 — just hasn’t moved. I’m typically around 9:50 - 10:10 pace, with temperature adjusted pace around 9:30 - 9:40. A month ago, those times were good, but now less so. I need my Zone 2 HM pace to be down to about 9:00 flat. If the temperature adjusted pace is right, that’s 30 seconds away, and I have three months left to do it. That’s a tall order for Zone 2 improvements, and there’s no buffer room left here.
The Bread and Butter 10K Runs
Remember that the data in the 10K chart below is not for one run per data point, but rather each data point is an average of all 10K’s for that week (the number in a week is in the table). As the table shows, I’m down to actual pace of around 9:30, temperature adjusted to about 8:50. I need to get this pace time down to 8:20. If temp-adjusted time is right, I have 30 seconds to make up. I’m not that confident that this can be done in three months, so there’s reason for some pessimism here. It’s also interesting when you see the spike below, when my average pace jumps to almost 10:00 - all due to wrecking my legs at the end of the previous week running the 18 mile Boston run. That whole week was a recovery week.
Tempo Runs
I haven’t made a chart for the tempo runs because there aren’t enough of them just yet. These runs have been hard, but satisfying. The task is a 5 mile run, running just under my lactate threshold heart rate, which is about 165. This month, I found that my tempo runs floated around 8:10 actual, and 7:40 temperature adjusted, with heart rate average around 160 each time. The last tempo run - a 7:31 time - was on a treadmill, so I’d put that really at around 7:50 if I were outside.
What I need by November for the five-mile tempo runs is a 7:00 flat pace. If temp adjustment is right, I’m 40 minutes off that pace. I start to get worried here — I’m just not sure that 12 weeks left in this plan is enough to drop this pace by 40 seconds. Maybe I can get it to 7:30, but if that’s true, then my goal HM pace — 7:20 — is simply impossible to achieve by November. Perhaps it is possible - if the interval work brings big benefits. I’m not sure.
Intervals
I hate interval sessions. But they’ve been pretty good so far. I’ve stuck to 8 x 400s, and have kept my average pace at around 6:30. To run my target HM, I need a 400 to be more around 6:00 flat. I can pull one of those off, perhaps two. But not eight. I’m also not sure I could get to 6:00 flat by November. Again, this is not good news.
At the same time, I have seen real improvement in interval training. When I ran the first set in Week 26, they damn near killed me. I seriously thought I was going to die. When I ran the set this past week, at pretty much the same average pace, I felt fine. In fact, my Garmin told my that I had taken it easy, compared to previous intervals. So, I made solid improvement. So, perhaps I can make the needed improvements in time? If I had run the last set as hard as the first, I probably could have hit 6:20.
My plan, for month 8, is to increase the interval distance to 600m, so I’ll be doing 6 x 600 instead of 8 x 400. The goal is to keep the average interval pace at about the same - keeping it on the low side between 6:30 and 6:40. If the last set of 400s was not overly difficult, I should be able to do it if I push it. And if I can, then in month 9, I’ll increase to 4 x 800m, with the same pace goal. In month 10 I would then boost it to 3 x 1m repeats at 6:30. The goal, obviously, is to get the longest distance I can at that 6:30 pace. If I can run 3 x 1 repeats at 6:30 by race time, maybe I have a shot. Maybe.
Last But Not Least: Cross Training
I’m still maintaining my weekly cross-training, two sessions per week. My current workout schedule looks like this, with current pounds listed and the increase or decrease of pounds from last month to the right of each. All exercises are three sets of 10 reps.
Two things are worth noting here:
I had to decrease weight on the Leg Press. In Week 25, I pushed 300 pounds on the leg press, and pulled something in my left knee, and it nagged me for a week. I got pretty scared of injury here so laid off for a week, then when I returned to it I decreased to 290, where I’m not having any problems. I could do 300, but I could tell that it was risky to do it. So, no thanks!
I also had to decrease on biceps, due to the need to move to two separate hand weights instead of a singular curl bar. The problem is that I have a neurological problem that leads my left side to be weaker than my right, so using a single bar means bad form, and I end up overcompensating with my right arm. So, I need to use separately hand held weights, and use less weight in my left rather than my right hand so my left side does the work it needs to.
I can’t seem to increase weight on Leg Extension and Leg Curl. Partly, this is due to the machines involved. I don’t trust them at these high weights, and I feel as if the risk for injury is high. I’ve been thinking of moving to converting these two exercises to free weights. I’m not sure how to do a free weight version of Leg Curls, though I suspect dead weight squats would replace the Leg Extension.
Some Thoughts after Seven-Months
Bodies Are Finely Attuned to What Your Plan Requires
When I flew home to see family in Boston, I had to run this 18 miler (below). I was just so happy to see a major city again after being cooped up in Missouri for 18 long COVID months. I knew it was dumb to do this, since my weekly long run was only 15 miles. But I’ve run more than 18 before (ran a marathon) so I knew I could do it, and I couldn’t resist. So I threw caution to the wind.
Result: a very fun run, but I paid the bill for it - it wrecked my legs for a week. I could barely walk for a day or two, as my calves and quads lit up. This reminded me of a simple truth beginning runners have to keep in mind: your body is attuned to the boundaries of your regular plan. I’ve run 18 before but not recently. So, 15 was just fine - but that last 3, which seems so tiny, was enough to tear up my legs. Be careful.
I’ve found that this is true not just in terms of mileage, but also the way your run your weekly plan. If I switch out a regular Monday tempo run with a regular Thursday Z2 10k for some reason, this may well lead to a serious problem. Your body is attuned to how you run your miles, and your scheduled way of running them, not just in terms of total weekly mileage. Alterations of any kind can cause a problem.
I realize that these cautionary points run up against some things I said at the start of this post about being Daoist with your plan, and not being too rigid. I think the two can be reconciled. You don’t want to be flippant with your plan for no reason, making willy-nilly changes. You’ll get hurt. But you don’t want to be rigid either, if there’s good reason to change something. You just need to be smart about how to do it.
You Really Have to Know Why You Are Running
Running is hard, but running a training plan is really, really hard because it involves pushing your limits and adhering to serious discipline. Over the past month, as I noted, I’ve had some motivational problems. It’s so clear to me that when you engage in this activity you simply have to know why you are doing what you are doing. If you don’t have a clear goal, and reason for it, you cannot maintain this level of activity.
I was talking to someone about this recently who has decided to give running a shot. I said that knowing what you are doing and why is essential all the time, but it is particularly a problem in the beginning, when the mental challenges that push against running are great. When that inner voice, the one that wants you to quit, starts really speaking up, you need a counter-argument. If you don’t have a good one, you’ll quit.
My problem lately has been the growing belief that I’m not going to hit my target pace in November. Given the length of this plan - 10 months - that can be a real let down and disappointment to carry with you in the middle of a hard tempo run, or a long 15 miler. So, you have to not only know why you are doing what you’re doing, but you also need a fall back reason - even if your goal is not met, is it worthwhile? You need an answer to this question, or the anti-run voices in your head will win.
It is So Cool to Run with your Kid
As I mentioned, my 12 year old daughter has decided to give running a shot. She’s going into week four of her “training plan” this week (at this point, we’re running 3x a week, about a 5k each time). I run with her, and it has been such a great experience. For all the talk about “running is like life” you don’t truly experience this until you’ve run with your kid and you’re using running as a way to provide coaching for not just successful runs, but a successful life. Great parent-kid talks during running.
Also, it’s a great to participate in a difficult activity with a member of the family. You’re out there together, really pushing yourselves and doing your best as a unit. It’s a really awesome bonding experience. It’s also so cool to see a kid really take pride in what they are are doing, and to look forward to the next time you go out. Who knows if she’ll follow through, but at this point she’s talking about running Cross Country this school year. If so, wow - but even if not, still great, and I’m so proud of her.
I’ll Say it Again: Zone 2 Works
Even though this month has been a plateau month in which I’ve seen virtually no gains in my Zone 2 run pace times, I’m still very thankful that I started this approach to training. For one, I really do enjoy my runs when I’m in Zone 2. Running hard is stressful. Sometimes you have to do it, but to do it all the time takes the joy out of the whole activity, in my opinion.
But also, a big reason I’ve really come to appreciate this plan is that I haven’t been hurt in over 6 months. This was NOT my experience in previous training plans, when I ran hard a lot of the time. I was always getting hurt, or nursing some physical issue or other. Doing 80% of your runs in Zone 2 really helps when you run the 20% hard runs. I’ve recovered, and good to go. I might get hurt, but it won’t be because I’m not rested.
In the end, if I don’t make my November time, it won’t be because Zone 2 training failed, it will be because I didn’t give it enough time. Most Zone 2 plans (as well as full out MAF training) requires at least a year. So, I always knew I was trying to get this done on a short schedule. If I fail to make my goal in November, I’ll just keep on keeping on, and find another race to qualify.
Up next: Month Eight.
If this is the first post you’ve read, there’s a long series on this plan. In month one I saw big results, in month two I saw no gains at all, while in month three I saw small gains and in month four I saw some big progress again. Month five was “slow progress” and in month six significant improvements again. Up and down, up and down, and up and down.
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