Training, Jan. 30 through Feb. 5
75 miles in eleven runs, most of them pleasant enough. This was my fourth straight week of 70 or more miles, although there was nothing remarkable about it other than its adding to the aforementioned streak.
I'm discovering some things about training in my late forties that don't thrill me, but do make a great deal of sense. And these issues certainly should compute, given that I've confidently told many other people how strongly the relevant principles apply to every runner over 40 and even been paid by running magazines to discuss them, in large part using portions of my anatomy not designed to be instrumental in carrying on conversations.
One is that I can't run 13 miles at a meaningful pace and expect to feel bouncy the next day. Part of this, I'm sure, is the result of simply not being as fit as I can expect to be in another couple of months, not merely aerobically but in terms of the pounding my legs can gracefully absorb. I keep having to remind myself that 13 miles is no longer below my daily average for the past two, three, or six months and that if I exceed, say, 90 minutes in a given run, I need to allow myself 48 hours before trying anything quick.
Another is that I can't count on becoming reasonably fast on raw mileage alone, whatever "fast" means at my age and at a far higher altitude than the ones at which I spent my prime running years. While I've always known that pure brute-force mileage is necessary for me to run well at any distance but never sufficient, I'm finally accepting that I can't even start to do real speed sessions until I have done a few weeks of basic alactic work in that area, although a lot of this is as much psychological as physical (pardon the Yogi Berra-ism).
A third is that I seem to do better at my current workload of about 9 to 12 miles a day by doing doubles about two days in every three, i.e., running 11 or 12 times in all. This suits my daily schedule nicely because I prefer to get about half an hour of outdoor time in before dealing with e-mails containing directives that are as likely as not to have me scowling, snarling, or formally declaring war against people who will never know that I have done it because I won't follow through with any acts of genuine aggression. I'm continually having to tell myself that if people were as good at certain tasks as my grousing suggests I want them to be, then I would have to look for different work, and at the moment I really couldn't have it much better in that area.
One interesting thing is that, while my everyday training pace has remained fairly constant since about mid-December, when I was only two weeks into this latest display of aerobic ambition, it's become far easier to run that pace. Yes, I know this is also a no-brainer, but my thinking is that I should expect to run a little faster, on average, as time passes because I should presumably be putting forth the same daily effort I was when I was in inferior shape. It doesn't work that way, though; I just patter along more comfortably than before, and even if my HR is the same at 6:40 pace as it was six weeks ago at 7:30 pace, picking it up to even that pace seems to require a conscious effort at turning my legs over a little. This is either a call to just pack it in and find a better mode of physical exercise or bite the bullet and work on speed. And on not using trite metaphors.
Anyway, I've been using this blog as a de facto training log, but instead of just yacking about what I've done, I believe that I should be noting things I plan to do or at least should do. So this week I need to do 8 x 100-meter strides at least twice and get back into a real routine of push-ups, ab exercises, pull-ups and dips -- I have never liked lifting weights much but have been intermittently very dedicated with respect to these exercises, especially -- but not only -- during my Army days.