Training Journal 2023‑03‑27

Plan and Outcome

Day	Planned Workout	Executed Workout
Mon	50 min RR	6 mile RR
Tue	45 min ER, 45 min ER	30 min bike RR
Wed	2 x 2 mi MP + 4 x 200 R, 45 min ER	2 x 2 mi MP + 4 x 200 R, 45 min ER
Thu	Rest & Recovery	50 min RR
Fri	55 min RR	45 min RR
Sat	20 mile ER w/ 8 MP	20 mi ER w/ 8 MP
Sun	1 hr RR	1 hr RR

Tracking	Week	Month	Year
Run Mileage	57.72 mi	Mar: 238.79 mi, Apr: 27.01 mi	599.63 mi
Training Duration	08:25:56	Mar: 34:30:40, Apr: 03:28:29	96:59:33

Priorities

1. 8.5 hours running volume, 60-65 miles. Related Goal.
2. 2 MP workouts. Related Goal
3. Chopping Block: Tue - 45 min ER, Wed - 45 min ER

Journal

Monday, March 27, 2023

6 mile RR

Duration: 54:16, Avg Pace: 9:02/mi, Avg HR: 129 bpm, EF: 1.53 Nice recovery run. Took Zuko and had a pretty good time. Legs not too sore but a little heavy. Feet slightly sore but nowhere near where they were a few weeks ago. Even compared to last Monday’s recovery run, I felt better today.

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

30 min bike RR

Felt nice to spin the legs easy after sitting in the car all day. HR was quite a bit higher than normal, so I dropped down from 150 watts to 110 watts and HR settled into what I normally expect for a light easy ride. Glad I decided to bike instead of run because it would have been difficult to keep the effort this light.

I had a work meeting in Twin Falls today, so I originally planned to do two short easy runs today: one before I left for the meeting, and one when I got home. Instead, I actually didn’t get all my work done yesterday in preparation for the meeting, so I had to work this morning before leaving. Of course, the client showed up late and the meeting ran long, so I didn’t get home as soon as I was planning on. Decided to prioritize getting ready for the MP workout I want to do tomorrow, so I went with the light bike effort and then did my yoga and hip routines.

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

2x2mi MP + 4x200 R

HR was high this morning and during warm up, but I felt fine overall. Morgan wasn’t around so I just ran the MP miles by feel and didn’t test lactate. I was going a bit slower relative to my effort than I was expecting. But I’d say it was a good workout. 200s were 37, 37, 38, 36.

MP Mile	Duration	Avg HR	Max HR	EF
1	6:24	167 bpm	172 bpm	1.59
2	6:17	171 bpm	178 bpm	1.62
3	6:16	163 bpm	173 bpm	1.70
4	6:32	171 bpm	176 bpm	1.58

Looking back at the past few weeks of MP workouts, it looks like when I’m feeling fresh, EF is usually much higher, around 1.75. And my HR in miles 2 and 4 was actually closer to what I see during Tempo intervals.

When I’ve been feeling fatigued on other MP workouts, EF is usually around 1.70 So seeing the most of these down around 1.60 is definitely low, but this feels like a situation where I shouldn’t get caught up on the results of one workout. I’ve done some good workouts over the past 7-10 days and I’m building up some fatigue in my legs. An EF drop from 1.75 to 1.60 is an 8.6% decline. Although I expect to see my performance decrease during periods of higher density of workouts in my trianing, this is getting close to what I feel would be too much.

When I was first looking at this tonight, I did my math wrong and thought it was a 5% decline, and I wrote that 10% would probably be too much. So now I corrected the math and 8.6% is pretty close to 10%. But I actually have no idea how much is too much, because this is really the first training cycle I’m tracking my HR and EF all the time. So for now I’ll just note it and see how things turn out. In any case, I’m glad I’m already planning to keep things easy over the next couple of days. Hopefully some recovery will get me back to a slightly better performance level for my last big workout. If HR continues to be elevated both Thursday and Friday, I’ll push it to Sunday.

45 min RR

Avg Pace: 9:38/mi, Avg HR: 131 bpm, EF: 1.39 Took it nice and easy on the treadmill. HR popped right up to 130 bpm when I first started, so as I warmed up, I slowed it down to where I kept my HR right around there. Legs definitely feel a bit tired, but it was nice to get in a bit more easy volume today.

Thursday, March 30, 2023

50 min RR

Friday, March 31, 2023

45 min RR

Saturday, April 1, 2023

20 mile ER w/ 8 MP

Duration: 2:28:29, Avg Pace: 7:25/mi, Avg HR: 149 bpm, EF: 1.60 Good workout, well executed. Feel like I ran well given the accumulated fatigue in my legs right now. I’m glad I’ve been able to get in enough good work the last 5-6 weeks to build up some fatigue. The MP miles felt pretty smooth and comfortable. Started out a little quick maybe but settled in fine. I’m ready to start tapering and feeling optimistic about the race.

Mile	Pace	Avg HR	Max HR	EF	Lactate
1-11	8:13/mi	139 bpm	152 bpm	1.56	0.7 mmol/L
12	6:09	154 bpm	165 bpm	1.86	N/A
13	6:14	170 bpm	177 bpm	1.69	2.7 mmol/L
14	6:17	164 bpm	176 bpm	1.72	N/A
15	6:11	170 bpm	176 bpm	1.65	N/A
16	6:22	171 bpm	176 bpm	1.63	N/A
17	6:26	171 bpm	176 bpm	1.58	3.1 mmol/L
18	6:03	167 bpm	175 bpm	1.72	N/A
19	6:17	175 bpm	179 bpm	1.60	2.0 mmol/L

Lactate was 1.4 mmol/L before I started the run. I wasn’t really using lactate to guide my effort today, but wanted to take the readings for information and future analysis. I’m skeptical about the last reading. I did feel like I was giving a lower effort on the last mile, but the HR trended higher than previous miles. Could be a bad reading, could also be disconnect or unpairing of lactate and HR. Not sure if that’s something that is common to observe over longer durations or not.

Sunday, April 2, 2023

1 hr RR

Distance: 7 mi, Avg Pace: 8:34/mi, Avg HR: 126 bpm, EF 1.63 Felt quite a bit better than I was expecting to after a big workout yesteray. I guess that probably means I’m adapting well to my current level of training volume. This run was actually 2 x 30 min on the treadmill because Morgan got us breakfast and coffee from West Side so I stopped to eat my burrito before it got cold.

Review and Thoughts

Another solid week in the books. I didn’t quite hit my running time planned for the week, since I wasn’t able to stick to my schedule when I had to go up to Twin for work. But I’m pleased with getting in another ~8 hour week of running.

At the end of February, I set a mileage goal and a target number of Tempo and MP workouts to get in before I started tapering for the marathon. The marathon prep work is all done now. I ended up getting in 282 miles over the past 5 weeks, which exceeds my goal of 275 miles. I also did 4 Tempo and 7 MP workouts. I had targeted 5 Tempo and 6 MP. I count this as a success because I still got in 11 of these workouts. And being a little more specific to the marathon is probably not a bad thing.

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Training Intensity Distribution: