Dec 12

FIT:
Intervals!

I’m thinking about starting to list the type of workout next to the date. That way, you know more about what you’re getting into. I know that most of my posts are the same… every week… progression run most of the time. How tired I am. That’s it most of the time. Intervals and long runs occasionally. The redone title would at least provide a better overview of my training when you dig into the archive. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll even go through the 750+ previous posts and re-name them. Many of the early ones would probably be daily fuel recaps, rather than only workout recaps, so I haven’t really done 750+ workouts since the blog started. That would be a lot of workouts. It would be fun to do the re-naming, though. It’s like reading through your old diary. You see patterns. You remember good times. You look back on bad times and are thankful for how God has been faithful and has pulled you through times when you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face because the future looked so dark. We’ll see. Maybe over Xmas break when I don’t know what to do with all of the extra time. Two weeks of it!!! Aaaaah.

So… intervals.

Oh yeah, yesterday…

I did an Insanity workout DVD after taking 7 weeks off. I took the time off after I felt like I may be starting to get a little stress-fractury spot on my shin. Who knows whether it was anything like that. But I felt like Insanity might’ve caused it, and I needed to be careful. But I haven’t noticed that spot in the past 3 or so weeks. Plyos is proven to have very real benefits when it comes to 5K times, and a little goes a long way. It does stress tendons/ligaments/muscles, so I thought that if I was going to put stress on it, it’s best to get the stresses and major adaptations going early in my training cycle, before I got to the really long runs and got close to the race date, when I’d have to manage risks. Now, even in the early stages, is when I’m doing a lot of the work. When you’re up to weeks before the race, not much of what you do will help at that point. It’s what you put in now and in the coming weeks that are going to be paying dividends later on. So I’ll invest some now in plyos. Maybe once a week or every two weeks.

I did the Pure Cardio + Cardio Abs DVD. P.C. still gives me a good working. I wondered how it would feel to get back to Insanity after time off, but I think the muscle memory is still there. I’m afraid of annoying my neighbors with all of the jumping, so I’m very careful to land as softly as possible. I wonder how that influences the type of workout I get. Does it make it better? Worse? Does the extra work of trying to land softly get offset by my possible limiting of the height I go for in my jumps? No complaints from my downstairs neighbor so far, who happens to also be one of the managers of the apt complex. So I want to be careful.

Afterwards, I got in my Xmas light walk. It ended up being a walk, but it was a very good walk. A walk was less worrisome, since I didn’t have to carry a map or cover lots of ground or worry excessively about gear. Instead, I put on some reflective armbands and reflective gloves, wore just 2 thinner layers, and headed out. I got to chat on the phone with my old college roommate, which was really nice. The Xmas lights were also nice. No extreme houses, but any decorations, no matter how small, are enjoyable.

The next day (today), I was sore. My upper back, hammies (from squats), and upper arms (not biceps… more like deltoids, bit of triceps). I don’t get sore often. Felt this way all day. While at work, I felt like a run may feel good, to loosen everything up. It was a long, stressful workday. But I guess it’s satisfying.

Ok… intervals.

I thought that a slow 3-4 mi run might feel good for loosening up, but when it was getting close to time to go to the gym, I was feeling like intervals may be good. It was good timing, since I just had an off week, which marked the end of the first cycle within my training program. 3 weeks of build-up, then 1 pull-back week, which just called for 3 days of 6 mi easy (8:33 pace). So it was getting to be time to bring back some speed, and doing it early in the week would give me plenty of time to recover by the weekend long run day. It was maybe a little risky to do it the day after plyos, since sprinting is somewhat plyo-like. But I think it was ok.

Workout: 1 mi warmup in 8:27. Took me a little longer to move away from 7mph than normal. 4 x [1/2 mi @ 9mph, ¼ mi @ 7.5mph], ½ mi cooldown (progressively faster) in 3:53.

Good. Not the big 3 x [3/4 @ 9, ½ @ 7.5] that I hit two weeks ago, but the variation is good, and each variation probably has its own benefits. There’s probably one that’s better than the other, like maybe after X minutes @ 9mph, you get diminishing returns, and it’d be better to do more reps vs. longer reps. Or maybe it’s the opposite and keeping it going past Y minutes @ 9mph does a lot to make you even tougher. Dunno. So maybe it’s best to shake it up in my workouts. Keeps things interesting in any case. And keeps me from getting stuck in the comparison game all the time, putting too much stock into how I feel one week to another doing the same workout.

I was so tired before the run. It was a 11.75 hr non-stop workday. I forgot to bring my 75% light cheese to lunch today, and when I realized it this morning, I started panicking. I like cheese. It was okay. I at least had Goldfish.

Anyway…. I was tired, but I found training videos at competitor.com, and they’re inspiring. You watch how pro athletes live and approach their runs, recovery, nutrition, all of that.

As I was walking back to my apt after the run, I relished in how maybe I wasn’t a pro athlete, but working at a normal job but also getting to be hard-core about your running after work is the next best thing. I can’t run all day anyway, so why not spend the 8 hrs of not running and resting my legs with work? On the downside, with work, I don’t get as much sleep as I should, which hinders recovery and the ability to absorb better training. And I don’t have time to do all of the foam rolling, massaging, drills, etc. But it’s alright. I do a bit of stretching, maybe once every 1.25 days on ave, post-workout, normally, for 20 or so min. It’s good.

Oh, and coming out of the gym still with my body hot, makes clouds of steam roll off of me as I go back home. That’s always cool.