Jan 19: Pushing the Pedal

FIT:
Pushed the gas pedal a bit today on my run, and it was great. I’ve been thinking more about last year’s training.

I was often dead tired last year. It seems like that would’ve hindered my training. I’d try to take like a 1hr nap after work and dinner, and then I’d drag myself out of bed before the gym closed. Now, I’m physically better. Getting by with fewer naps. No late-night work sessions in the past few months. So that’s not it.

What could be it… I pushed the pace more last year and went maybe 92% effort on the runs. You don’t want 100% because of the injury risk. This time, I’ve been stopping way earlier… maybe 75-80% or something. I haven’t gone as hard because I was too conservative about avoiding injury risk, and I thought I was accomplishing the task just fine. I didn’t realize until I checked my pace patterns after noticing the lagging LRs that I was more going through the motions than improving fitness.

I stepped it up today. A longer run with a bit quicker pace. It was great.
6.2 in 48:42, 7:51 ave. Splits> 8:24, 8:01, 7:55, 7:47, 7:40, 7:27, 1:26 for 0.2.

Today and yesterday, I stretched and foam rolled right before the run because it energized and loosened me up so much on Monday that I wished I could run. It didn’t have the quite same effect, but it does feel kind of good in general. Normally, I don’t do static stretching before workouts because it supposedly decreases endurance and strength, but I think it’s probably ok for training runs and in small doses.