This week has been a particularly bad running week for myself. I've come down with a nagging pain in the lateral aspect of my left foot which has been hanging around for nearly two weeks, and flares up from time to time, and as well, I encountered some significant fatigue in the past several days - likely from a combination of longer work hours (I just changed to a busier work service) and longer long runs on the weekend.
Things were looking good up to last week. I logged 85 hilly miles two weeks ago, and felt very good overall, with only minor foot pain and no significant fatigue. In fact, I was feeling pretty indestructible then, but I know from experience that trying to "max" out myself during those indestructible weeks are a formula for injury. The following week didn't go quite as well, but I took an extra day off due to holiday festivities, and still logged about 62 miles for the week.
I suspect that my longer long runs (the hilly 24 milers) have been more demanding on my body than I expected, and I'll need to use this week as a significant pullback week. The timing is definitely not good, as the SF marathon is now about 3 weeks away, so I'd much rather be hitting peak mileage and speed in the next week, but I'm not sure how possible that's going to be given my foot and my current fatigue. There is an upside though, and it's that that 23-24 mile training distance really seems to be a necessary hurdle for me to overcome before I can reach the next level of performance. Clearly, my muscles and ligaments are unaccustomed to the stress of that distance, and I strongly feel that I would benefit greatly by training (gradually) to routinely run that distance, since endurance is the weakest link in my fitness. I do suspect however, that this process will take at least several months, and I certainly won't be able to pull it off in the next few weeks.
I'm going to play it safer rather than sorry on this one and cut back a bit on the mileage and speed to see how my foot and fatigue fares. I was really hoping that the strength and speed I'd built for the San Diego marathon would let me train hard through to this next one, but I'm finding that the added endurance training is necessating real recovery time for me. On the bright side, these punishing long runs are definitely making me aware of my endurance deficits after the 2:45hr mark - I generally feel prettys strong up to that point, but suffer a very rapid decline in pace and energy in the next half hour after that. It's going to take some dedicated buildup in my next cycle to remedy this - I suspect that once I can do those 24 milers at decent training paces, I'll experience a significant improvement in my performance. The caveat is that I'm finding that these long long runs are very demanding, and probably shouldn't be done more than 2-3 times in a row unless I'm running consistent high mileage during the week - the chances for a strain are quite great with this sort of stress. Perhaps another one of the biggest things I'm taking away from this episode is that slow structured buildups are really, really important. In my opinion, running consistent lower mileage (for months) is definitely better than bursts of high mileage mixed with really low mileage. I'm really looking forward to getting back into gradual Pfitz training after SF in my next buildup.
I'll probably average around 60 miles for the next 2 weeks if all goes well with my foot this week, and then try and go into a minitaper before Aug 3. Needless to say, right now, I'm not even sure I'll be able to run the race, so I'm not at all expecting to go for any big goals on that day. I'll re-evaluate as things come along - I tend to shape up pretty well right around taper time, so hopefully things will be more optimistic by then.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
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4 comments:
Willis -- 85mpw is a lot by most anyone's standards (I've never ran that much before)... I think it's natural to feel some real fatigue after mileage like that.
I've found that I'm happy in the 50-something range. It's enough to be relatively strong... but not enough to burnout or get injured. At some point I'll up things a bit, but probably not as high as your 85 mpw.
I've heard that musicians consider the space between notes to be just as important as the notes themselves... and artists place a lot of emphasis on the background space as well. So too with running -- I think rest is just as important as miles. Without rest you won't fully realize the benefits of the miles. Personally I would strongly consider erring on the side of tapering too much for SF. I think you have a strong race in you -- that is, if you're well-rested.
Hey Willis- I'm no expert, but I maxed out 45 mpw when hitting 3:15, 3:11 then a 3:07 in my recent marathons.
I agree with dlgoldman....rest days are very important---- Rest up and mentally gear for SF.
You can do it!
Willis --
Putting up huge long runs like that is very taxing. A concept I heard about was something called a double long run. It's basically attempting to do what you are after....increasing endurance over a long run, but doing so by doing back to back medium-long runs as a mix up to the traditional one long run on the weekend. So your weekend might be a 16/16 or 18/18 type of run rather than a straight 24. Personally, I'd rather do doubles and overall weekly mileage. Those big long ones would break me down quick.
Stay safe and injury free!
dlgoldman - Great comments, as usual. If anything, I've learned more about my limits this year than anything else - and that's good for something down the road! Right now, my body feels ok, but my foot is really worrisome - I'll have to do some cycling to see if it holds up in less miles.
Morrissey - You've got some great talent there - 45mpw to 3:07 is amazing! I'm going to try and follow Pfitz's schedule of around 60, 40, 25 in the final 3 weeks and just pray for a decent race at SF - there's pretty much no way I'll be able to BQ on that course in my current state, unfortunately.
Eddie - I definitely think you're right on the abusiveness of those long runs. They're definitely necessary, but week after week of them can really take a toll if you're also doing speedwork. If I'm going to add miles in the future, I'll likely only add 1-2 miles on the LRs and then double the rest over 70 as you've been doing very successfully. I also like the back-to-back 16/16 18/18 idea - I'm definitely going to do a few of those this next cycle. Great advice!
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